>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^EvilDeathBee:
"There's no such thing as money. Money doesn't exist but you believe in it"
Seriously?

You know, that struck me as so mindbogglingly dumb I couldn't believe he said that out loud, much less on television.
But the more I think about it, maybe he was on to something. In a sense, he's right -- money isn't real. Money only works the way it does because we believe it will. You have to have faith in it, or it won't do anything.
The problem that creates for him is that if that is the definition of faith, then God is just as much of a man-made fiction as money is. He only exists through our collective belief in Him, and if we stop believing, He ceases to exist as a force in our lives.
Now of course, we could always go the same route we went with money -- set up an enforcement mechanism so that if people try to operate outside the monetary system, they get jailed. That'll make believers out of everyone, right?
Maybe someday we'll realize just how right that guy was...


We already have a system which forces people to operate within the monetary system. OK, it's not as extreme as your example, but courts only enforce contracts if parties agree to pay compensation/damages/etc in our government's fiat currency. It's called legal tender law

@RedSky Both "sides" are just gambling. They use all kinds of statistical models and data to convince themselves that they're not, but they are. They know it's unstable, but they're trying to avoid the hot potato.

You're correct in your logical assertions that each of these parties have a "role" in the market. Yes, hedge funds can have a downward influence. Yes, speculators can drive up prices. In theory, these cancel out. In reality, it causes the system to become fragile because these upward and downward influences don't happen simultaneously in a neat math equation. The problem is that all of this up/down activity causes drastic fluctuations in the price of goods which have nothing to do with supply or demand. The more layered the contracts and transactions get, the less stable the price. Even if the up/down forces actually succeed in "stabilizing" (or even lowering) the average price over time, that doesn't prevent people from starving because rice is too expensive this month.

Yes, all of those supply/demand issues are factors in price, but they do not mitigate the central point. The video started off by explaining that the 4 "complex" factors you listed at the end don't account for price instability. Consumers, producers, supply chains, etc can acclimate to gradual changes, but they have a hard time responding to spikes. That's one of the central points of the video.

The biggest problem is that the application of these economic theories work well to increase stability when complexity is low, yet they actually decrease stability when complexity increases. It's easy to logically explain why speculators are necessary. It's a persuasive argument, but it ignores the bigger issue at hand. It's much harder to explain why "speculators speculating on speculators" is a problem when people can easily understand "speculators are good in this logical everyday situation".

>> ^Darkhand:

Can someone tell me why we need speculators? In all seriousness I just want to understand. Please correct me if I am wrong but speculators just seem to me to be people who tell investors how to invest their money so the investors doesn't have to do research themselves?


It's partly in the video. Speculators help farmers and people who use farmers' goods by pre-purchasing and pre-selling harvests at fixed prices. That way, a farmer knows exactly how much his crop will be worth when he harvests it, and a bread company or whatever knows exactly what they will be paying for the next batch of incoming wheat/flour/etc. The speculator studies the market and establishes a price both parties are willing to pay, even though neither party has produced or consumed the good yet. These are called futures.

This stabilizes food sources, which is a good thing. The problem is when people speculate on the speculators and sign all sorts of promises to pay each other depending on what happens...these are referred to in common terms as "bets". Yes...they bet each other on the outcomes of food production. It gets made to look complicated with lots of legalese, but it really isn't very complex.

>> ^Gallowflak:

Nah. This sort of abrasive bullshit would've been appropriate in IV, maybe. In Empire, the film introduces him really well; he's developed from his childish hedonistic bullshit, but he's still a bit of a douche, self-absorbed - perhaps only superficially - and there's sufficient antagonism to make him an interesting character.
But the Han here is just being a cunt. It's so blunt and ridiculous that it would shut down the empathic process the audience goes through with the character. The thing with Han is that the good outweighs the bad and here, in this scene, it's like they're trying to tip the scales the other way. It's out of place, it's wrong for the film, the character arc and the character itself.
Another thing is that, through almost all the films, whenever Han was being a dick he was still likeable to an extent. But this scene just makes him seem really ugly.


Well said. It's interesting to see the scene though, all these years later. It's also interesting that what they cut out here was better and had more emotion than anything in the prequels as @GeeSussFreeK pointed out.

"If we were a good university, we wouldn't have a commercial."

I always say I hate advertising because if it's something people actually need, they'll hear about it through communicating with other people. This is true for everything with any real value.

I wouldn't have a problem with the "push a button" ending if there were choices you had to make early on which affected the end. In the original, there were a fair amount of choices mid-game which would prevent you from experiencing parts of the plot. You had to save and go back and play the game with different choices to experience everything. This game does not have that depth of replayability.

Also yes, agreed, all of the boss fights and the hallucinatory zombie thing were pretty lame.

Other than that, the actual gameplay was extremely reminiscent of the original and I had a great time playing it. Unfortunately they've already announced DLC which fills in a part of the plot where they sort of fast forwarded the story in the base game. DLC is lame when it's clearly planned out and worked on ahead of time.

>> ^Aniatario:

Bit of a change of pace to see Louis CK so vulnerable. You can tell it came from the heart.


Haven't you seen his newer show Louie? Watching that makes me sure the entire show comes from the heart. A really funny, strange, loving, crazy heart.

@direpickle @RedSky

Game Theory is dumb because it forces us to talk about morality in a vacuum. Real life choices have consequences that go beyond when the cameras shut off or an experiment ends.

That said, direpickle is mostly correct in saying that the "rational" choice, if executed by everyone, results in nobody getting any money. Having said that, how does that make the choice rational...unless you assume the other person does not have the same information as you? In this case you are in effect gambling on the other person having less "game theory information" than you.

You can still be wrong even if the average payout is higher by choosing steal. In any given specific case your payout can still be zero, regardless of your "theory". Really, the only option is, as mentioned, to tell the other person you fully intend to steal, but that you will share half the money if they pick share...and then actually share. If they pick steal even after you say this, you can just call them a moron and go home the same person you were before the show.

They should have the same game show and add in a box of kittens that gets dumped into a giant blender if either person chooses "steal". Y'know, to add in real consequences to the stealing other than "feeling bad", which many people (psychopaths) will not feel.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

Strictly speaking, it's more like 10 people since I'm paying double the normal rate due to progressive taxes. But I don't understand why you consider my earnings theft. Even if there is a limited supply of money, my money has been received through consensual exchange. If I buy a car which is in limited supply is it by definition stolen? Surely we should reserve the word theft for when things are taken from people against there will. Personally I think taxation is an example of this.


Ah yes...the standard Libertarian view of earnings = consensual exchange and taxation = stealing. The problem is, in a democracy, no amount of tax will ever be consensual to every citizen. That's kind of why we have majority rule, right? So, if one person thinks one penny in tax is theft on the part of government, does that mean we have to have zero taxes? Thankfully, the answer is no.

Most Libertarians favor some sort of basic tax for a defensive military, so consider this. For a time during the Civil War, you could buy your way out of the draft. That was consensual exchange under the law. Do you consider that type of exchange morally acceptable? If a rich father pays for a surrogate soldier for his son, is that fair? The son did nothing to earn that money through free exchange other than be born to a rich family...why does he deserve to have someone fight in his place?

With a truly free market, prostitution would be legal free exchange, you could sell body parts, offer your womb up to carry other peoples' babies, etc. If your answer is "well, let's not go that far" then where do you stop? If you sign a contract to offer up your eggs and a baby for someone else and you change your mind, who do the courts rule in favor of when someone sues?

These are real world questions that beg to be answered when you take the hardcore Libertarian position. Few people successfully argue in favor of their Libertarian position without inviting heavy criticism from wide swathes of the population...hence the lack of a strong Libertarian party in the country. This general line of thought just doesn't hold up in specific real world cases which come up, often making it to the Supreme Court.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

Because you "earn" the income of about 80 people.
Or in otherwords - since the supply of money is limited - you steal the wages of 79 people who would otherwise have an income.
That's called selfish. Plain and simple.
[Not to mention completely cruel & dickish now that we're in a Global Depression]
>> ^pyloricvalve:
Why is it morally justified to impose a higher tax rate on the more highly paid? I'm already paying twenty people's worth.. Why should it be more?



The supply of money isn't limited, per se...it's directly related to the total amount of debt. If people promise to pay more debts (and therefore interest), then there is more money overall. That's a big reason why consumer confidence and the housing market are such huge drivers in the economy. The more people take out loans for stuff/cars/homes, the more money becomes available for banks to loan. Hence, when there are too many defaults and foreclosures, the supply of money shrinks and you get credit crunches, etc.

If anyone's "stealing", they're stealing a relative amount of money compared to everyone else. You've got the right general idea, I think, but it's more like having a piece of a pie when the pie can get bigger and smaller.

I used to work at a lumber yard. I could write pages of hideous things I've seen people do. Never seen this one, though. But, a guy once used twine to cradle a 22' LVL underneath his truck. Nobody saw him doing it until he drove away...I can imagine him trying to stop and having it fly out...soooooo stupid.

If you don't know what an LVL is...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminated_veneer_lumber

@marinara Yes...you didn't read the part where i said "as for people calling you an idiot being the same thing"

I was addressing volumptuous' similarly stupid remarks. As I said, there's a difference between labeling groups of people and attacking someone personally. They're both silly, but one is definitely more useless.

To be fair, the rest of that clip has Romney saying he means corporate earnings go to people's pockets, not the implied "corporations deserve to be the same as people under the law".

Mitt Romney - "Corporations Are People, My Friend" - 8/11/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0QRRxU9I4c&feature=related

On the other hand, he seems to think there's no problem with the fact that the varying amounts of money that go to individual people is vastly distorted. Not to mention the effect of corporations on the environment, which is a deferred cost. I realize Colbert is making jokes, but hopefully people understand the actual argument as well.

The "where do you think it goes?" part of the clip I linked is where things really get crazy in peoples' minds...where people really start to differ in what they imagine is happening.

@Winstonfield_Pennypacker Your enlarged right amygdala is showing.

Even so, I agree that the discussion is often "is it occuring?" rather than "are humans affecting climate?", which is a problem.

Also, it would be cool if you didn't saturate your posts with ad hominem attacks. If you have a good point to make, you don't need to add the equivalent of "warmies", "bozo", etc. to every post you ever make. As for people calling you an idiot being the same thing...well...at least they're attacking you personally rather than some nebulous group you've labeled "warmies".

He didn't just like one game...he liked two...in the same episode.

..........