I feel like you're saying if indie, AAA knew the lottery numbers for next week they would have bought a ticket. Which of course they would have. But I don't see this game as something that is repeatable. It seems literally like winning the lottery, whether or not you can get a simple game in the app store to be such a success.
So I don't see the value in saying that nobody knew. In the same way saying someone didn't know next weeks lottery numbers doesn't make them incompetent or the person who won the lottery a genius (or have some special insight).
I didn't call the other game developers incompetent and I don't think the Flapper developer is a genius.
I'm just saying that art is pretty mysterious and despite the fact that people have been making video games for quite a while now, no one knows the formula for the next big hit and somehow the next hit always finds new and old ways to surprise us. But just my $0.02 ^_^
We know a lot of very effective formulas. Thats not to say all profit comes from games that follow formulas, but the formulas certainly make it more likely.
Is it a skills shortage or a won't-pay-market-value shortage? If more MBA's and the like start choosing silicon valley will Wall Street cry shortage or will they just raise the rates of pay and bonuses? If someone making 100k a year couldn't find a helicopter to buy they would be laughed out of the room if they suggested it was due to a shortage of helicopters rather then them not having enough money to buy. But companies who have every incentive to keep wages down are listened to and believed whenever they proclaim that there is a skills shortage, rather than people questioning whether they're paying enough.
I'm not sure what you think the "market value" is that employers won't pay. I'd guess it's something reasonable like the minimum you'd have to pay to get all the skilled workers you need. Raise your pay offer slowly, gradually attracting more people, until you have the people you need, and that amount of pay is the market rate.
But what if that rate of pay is more than the new employees are worth to the company, so hiring them would not benefit the company at all? Then it's not a market rate, because market rate isn't just the outer edge of what one side finds acceptable. If both sides don't find the rate acceptable, there's no market rate.
If a "greedy" employer refuses to pay what it takes to hire all the people they need, while their enlightened competitor does pay what it takes to get the necessary additional labor, one of those employers will have higher profits than the other, and the one with lower profits will be pressured by their investors to become more like the other.
That has been going on for centuries, and the result is a "labor shortage" in some areas, meaning companies (that always face competition from other companies) can't get all the labor they want at existing rates and wouldn't benefit from additional labor at higher rates. The problem may well be gradually driving the company out of business, but still, raising their wages would just drive them out of business faster.
What I'm saying is if you can't find employees at the current wage you're paying and increasing the wage means the employee is no longer worth it than you have the right amount of employees and there is no shortage. Companies aren't entitled to employees or entitled to be in business. Just because you can't afford something doesn't mean there is a shortage. But companies who are in this situation complain that there is a shortage when really they just can't afford the employees. All I meant was that I was annoyed at the constant talk of 'shortages'.
I understand your position, and I don't think your definition of "shortage" here is unreasonable. But shortage is a relative term--"short" relative to what?--and by some measures, there are real shortages in these situations. If we use corn instead of labor, for example, we might have a bad harvest one year, and the price of corn goes so high that it's not worth buying for certain products. The market still clamors for those products but isn't willing to pay what they would have to pay given the new price of corn. Your definition, if I understand it, would say that there is no shortage of corn; it's just more expensive than you can pay.
I'd still call it a shortage of corn, because I'm thinking of it relative to previous years, future expectations, the causes of the price change, etc. Rent control or earthquakes cause what many would consider a housing shortage, gov't price controls or bad weather create commodity shortages, and sufficiently generous welfare programs (you have to pay a lot more to make it worth working at all) or explosive increases in customer demand (not enough time for labor to learn new skills) can create labor shortages.
From the perspective of an employer, no longer being able to hire people at a wage that makes them worth hiring can be seen as a labor shortage, while from the perspective of a worker, no longer being able to get a job at a wage worth working for can be seen as a jobs shortage, but I agree with you that, especially if the changes are just the long-term evolution of the economy, there comes a point where it no longer makes sense to refer to something that will never come back as a "shortage".
Thanks for that link. VERY interesting. My impression, subject to change, is that there is a STEM shortage at the bottom (technicians) that rapidly diminishes as you head toward the top (PhDs), where there is a significant surplus.
I think we are short technicians, because so many people who would have been happy with two years of technical training and a basic, working class wage after graduation are instead herded into 4-yr bachelor's programs, where they end up dropping out with a few semesters of Nonsense Studies classes and a mountain of debt, qualifying them only for welfare or Walmart. By the time they realize they would have been much better off with a skilled technician job and a working class lifestyle, it's too late. I think if we changed our attitude toward skilled tradespeople, we would almost all be better off. Since we used to do this, and the Germans still do, it's an artificial shortage in my opinion.
On the other hand, I think we're overloaded with PhDs, because so many want the prestige, but the marginal value to an employer of additional specialized education in a specialty other than the job itself falls off so rapidly. Someone who did years of PhD work on turkey feathers is not much more valuable to a drug company than he was when he got his bachelors in biology. For many, the prestige of the PhD will have to be its own reward.
Yea I'd'd agree that trades jobs/technicians are probably experiencing a slight shortage due to the reasons you said. In Australia trades people can easily clear 100k.
It's supply and demand man. The reason I don't own a helicopter is precisely because there is a shortage. Anything with a free-floating price is in shortage. I would totally buy a helicopter if they were $10k or less.
My point is that there isn't this magical jobs fountain that people are holding back from the masses, it's that there are large portions of the population that lack skills that are in demand in the work force.
Don't forget to include the fee's from an unstable method of exchange (bitcoin) depreciating or appreciating between the times you exchange it for USD.
Bitpay assumes the volatility risk for customers and merchants, and charges at most 1% for their cheapest platform, so none of this is really an issue - is it?
Bitpay is when the customer pays in bitcoin. But to get bitcoin you still need to exchange for USD somewhere. And that's where the cost of exchange risk comes in.
There may be specific examples (HDTV) where waiting means your money buys more, but overall the more you wait the less your money is worth in the economy due to inflation. Technology making products cheaper is not an example of deflation. Inflation and deflation pertain only to currency not products.
If however you hold your currency and everyday its worth more, besides the bare essentials there is barely an incentive to spend it. Also there is no guarantee that the HDTV will become cheaper, however it is guaranteed that a deflationary currency will gain value the more you hold on to it.
Inflation and deflation pertain only to currency not products.
Inflation is when your currency buys you less stuff tomorrow than today. Deflation is when it buys you more. Falling prices due to efficiency gains caused some deflation during the industrial revolution, and technology making products cheaper is definitely a kind of deflation. From Wikipedia:
Growth deflation: an enduring decrease in the real cost of
goods and services as the result of technological progress,
accompanied by competitive price cuts, resulting in an
increase in aggregate demand. A structural deflation existed
from 1870s until the cycle upswing that started in 1895. The
deflation was caused by the decrease in the production and
distribution costs of goods. It resulted in competitive price
cuts when markets were oversupplied. The mild inflation after
1895 was attributed to the increase in gold supply that had
been occurring for decades.
The dot-com bubble was late 90s very early 2000s. The established dates of birth for the baby boomer generation are from 1946-1964. In the year 2000 this puts the age range of the baby boomers from 36-54 years old. That means none of the baby boomers were retirement age. So I'm not sure how your explanation of them retiring is correct?
I'm interested to hear your reasoning for why it counts. Also at what point (age differential, position differential, gender differential) is it no longer unfair or immoral and why. Could we not argue that any sort of imbalance in a relationship makes it 'abuse'. If that's the case almost al social and commercial contracts are some sort of abuse of power.
At what frequency is visible light no longer yellow but rather orange? If that line is not easily defined, does that mean there is no difference between violet and red?
Discussions like this get extremely emotional and dialogue reduces to the lowest common denominator. Tragedy of commons is very relevant to the forming of morals. This is evidenced by hundreds and thousand of years of various abuse of humans. And while humanity is arguably in the best shape ever, there is uncertainty if we are heading to global or only a local maxima.
So no. Argument from community consensus is a bad heuristic for searching global happiness maxima. Of course, if morals are means to an end, not a goal in itself.
I wasn't trying to make a plea for community consensus. I think individuals come to their own conclusions about morality, but those conclusions are informed by the information that they receive from their environment and community. A person who never experiences meaningful debate, thought, or contemplation is going to be morally stunted compared to those who engage in regular debate and discussion. That doesn't mean every person who argues a point is morally superior, but in the aggregate, engaging in moral discussions will enhance an individuals expertise in determining moral veracity.
If you treat community discussion as a search for optimal morals, I fully agree with you. However, I stand by my original point as top voted comment already decided on the immorality of the JFK-Mimi affair as immoral without meaningful debate.
I think you are improperly comparing community consensus with tragedy of the commons. Community consensus is more akin to regulation than it is to nash equilibria. It's the nash equilibria that has been a bad heuristic for finding the global happiness maxima, because it's through the nash equilibria that the tragedy of the commons occurs. In contrast, effective regulation can better ensure the global happiness maxima. So that's why community dialogue and a rough consensus of mores can be useful and productive towards the health of a society.
So in other words particular people are unwilling to draw a specific line in the sand, but we nevertheless think that a democratic process is valuable?
You're asking for a clearly delineated line in the sand which I don't think is really possible with these kinds of things. Morals are just inherently fuzzy things. In other situations, this same behavior might be considered on the "crass, but reasonable" side of the line. In this case, I tend to agree that it was probably an abuse of power.
Well, in so far as the episode by the pool was concerned, there was consensus among all three present--Kennedy included--that he should not have done what he did. Perhaps he was just shamed by Powers. That doesn't reflect well on him either.
This article from a while back supports your thesis: that Powers, who rarely gave heavy criticism to his boss, rebuked him. After accepting the fellatio, of course. Figures.
Honest question which companies? Which companies that currently pay workers minimum wage are able to move overseas? Mcdonalds, Walmart etc cannot move their service jobs overseas.
It might incentivise those companies to find ways of doing business with less human labour. For example computer checkout /ordering systems or more emphasis on doing business online.
Because you shouldn't be accessing an unauthorised system? If someone unlawfully entered your house shouldn't they be punished for doing that not only if they take something?
Sure. Yes. But that punishment doesn't need to be multiple felony convictions and 30 years in prison for a minor, non-violent, victimless crime that nobody directly affected is interested in prosecuting. That's all.
Please read my post suggesting a tiered system. A tiered system would set limits in specific circumstances 'in stone' so that there isn't this idea that all computer trespasses can be sentenced on the same scale (e.g. from 0 - 30 years).
The specific circumstances can take into account things like:
- Did the defendant aim to profit financially from the actions?
- Was the defendant attempting to cause malicious harm? (i.e. he didn't want to profit, but he was trying to cause damage)
etc. The most innocuous being "no financial gain + no malicious intent."
Entering someone's house uninvited is extremely clearly not an appropriate thing to do.
But accessing an unauthorized system? That term is so ill-defined, that it quite literally means you can be prosecuted for modifying a URL and being given back a web page you weren't supposed to see.
Does that mean that if a door isn't locked, it is an invitation to enter my house? Take a look at the case of Andrew Auernheimer (mentioned in the OP) who could be sentenced up to 10 years in prison for accessing data on a web server that was unsecured (http://www.technewsdaily.com/15581-hacker-found-guilty-despi...)
The argument is that the cost of extracting the energy and transforming it into a usable source does not match the cost it does to the environment once that energy is used. That's what the carbon tax is for. It's for the carbon (pollutants) you produce not for the energy you use. Hence why it's called a carbon tax and not an energy tax.
Exactly. By capturing externalities correctly you'd encourage use of inconveniently located less-polluting energy sources in some cases, in preference to easily transported (or conveniently located) more polluting fuels.
(or, my favorite, easily transported, non polluting nuclear...)
It's not so simple. Until the EROI of other fuels improves dramatically a carbon dioxide tax is just going to make every fuel more expensive, since non-carbon fuels need carbon fuels as input.
Once the EROI goes up this isn't a problem. But until it does a carbon dioxide tax is pointless - it just makes everything more expensive.
And once the EROI does go up people will switch to those energy sources without prompting (they will simply be cheaper), so again a carbon dioxide tax does nothing.
A correctly-structured carbon tax would make a new NG plant relatively more attractive vs. continuing to operate a coal plant without the tax. (both fossil fuels, but NG is more efficient).
Also I think it shouldn't be a straight carbon tax, but an "environmental externalities tax". I personally care far more about other forms of pollution (especially localized) than CO2; I don't think global warming is a non-issue, but it's not the #1 environmental issue. Point sources of particulates, NO2, etc. should be taxed as well as maximum emissions specified (obviously a steel mill should be allowed to emit more, and pay for it, at full production in an efficient way, than a badly adjusted oil-fired school furnace, even if the school chooses to ignore economic rationality.)
If you make all energy more expensive, people will use less of it than they would otherwise. That's already a win. You're also creating a pain point that people will innovate around, and improving the ROI on investing in better energy sources.
The fact is, once alternative energy sources are at par, or even slightly above par, with fossil fuels, it will be a net win to switch to them. But the economy won't do so unless the price of fossil fuels reflects that.
> people will use less of it than they would otherwise
The trouble is that the economy is directly tied to energy usage. Force lower energy usage, and the economy suffers.
The cost of virtually everything is directly tied to the cost of energy. What costs money in lettuce? Mainly the trucks used to plant, harvest, and ship it.
What's your cost with trucks? Energy. What costs money there? The metal, and the assembly. The metal is free - it's in the ground. What costs money is the energy used to get it out of the ground and refine it.
Assembly? That's more machines, trace it back and it boils down to the cost of energy.
Salary? Also energy, since people need money to buy stuff.
What costs money in making alternative energy? Energy again. So raise the cost of conventional fuel, and alternative also costs more. It's impossible to win!
Use the carbon dioxide tax to fund alternative energy and people will fake it, like in Germany. They outsource the carbon dioxide costs to China, then ship that energy to the country in the form of solar panels. Those solar panels will not pay back their energy costs for decades. (Although if they do last that long it will be a win. But in the medium term it's a loss.)
You just can't force this stuff. You have to let the energy sources develop naturally, and let people use them due to price, not because you force them.
