That ant farm, bee hive analogy got me thinking. I wonder how ants and bees get along so effectively in large groups. Do they fight and squabble among each other? Do they kill each other? Do they have hierarchies where certain ants are obligated to perform certain functions. How do they decide who d...

i think that they are all at their best when they "accomplish" nothing. And that includes the Prez. The problem is they've been breaking shit for so many decades that now we have some serious issues to fix.  If we did manage to elect "do-nothings" for the next 50 years I'm not c...

Uhhhh.....I'm not talking about prohibition. I'm talking about why governments and social structures came into existence in nascent agricultural societies. Humans are violent. Your solution to this problem seems to be to abolish all power structures and simply tell everyone to play nice. Does that s...

Aren't 100,000 or more supposed to have died in Syria alone in recent years? How about that production of Springtime for Hitler in Rwanda in 1994 that left a million or so dead? It takes a lot of drunken brawls and fights over girlfriends to match events like those. Harry Truman killed almost 100,0...

"Given that the rate of inflation over the longer run is determined solely by monetary policy, central banks can, and indeed must, determine the long-run level of inflation." I disagree with the solely part. There are other factors than monetary policy that can lead to inflation. The mone...

What you don't seem to be getting is that QE isn't money printing . It's just rejiggering the form of people's assets. "Money printing" happens when Congress authorizes new deficit spending or when private banks make loans, not when the Fed swaps a bond for cash. These are assets that reg...

Yes I know now prices rise due to magic not money printing. What you don't seem to be getting is that QE isn't money printing . It's just rejiggering the form of people's assets. "Money printing" happens when Congress authorizes new deficit spending or when private banks make loans, not w...

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM So is it government that makes people violent, or people that make government violent? Certainly a lot of deaths happened in the 20th century. When you bind up large numbers of people into groups, arm them with machine guns, and square them off against eac...

Combining this information with what I am learning in my class on the violent history of humankind, I now understand why social power structures evolved. The reality is that humans  never biologically evolved to live in very large groups and we still haven't. In pregovernmental agricultural societie...

Seems like most death and violence is not occurring by the hands of government, but between individual citizens. http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/more-deadly-violence-among-civilians/1701015.html A new report finds that only a small percentage of violent deaths are a direct result of war. ...

She correctly states that inflation over the long run is determined by monetary policy and the central bank can't do much to affect the max sustainable level of employment. This is spot on. They can only create temporary inflation driven boosts. She then goes on to say to the bank needs to do somet...

The scandal! The shame! Those filthy democrats. Let's just keep stirring this pot....It gets everyone all hot and angry and makes for great media but serves no purpose other than to further radicalize either side of the political spectrum. I don't know all the circumstances but Im damn sure not goi...

These posts in response to the "event" are a good example of how divided this country is getting. If the media has their way they would probably love to generate a second civil war in this country. I mean, think of all the money such an event would generate. People would be glued to the ne...

The scandal! The shame! Those filthy democrats. Let's just keep stirring this pot....It gets everyone all hot and angry and makes for great media but serves no purpose other than to further radicalize either side of the political spectrum. I don't know all the circumstances but Im damn sure not goin...

doctors doing unnecessary diagnostic procedures  doctors prescribing expensive drugs when cheaper drugs are available Why do insurance companies let doctors get away with cutting into the insurance companies profits? Are they just dumb? Is it too expensive to request that doctors use cheap generics...

Im going to bump this thread again and put in another plug for this course on humankind. Lectures 5 and 6 in the course perfectly relate to what we are discussing here. Even if you don't watch the first lectures, I think just watching these two will give you a good perspective on how our present soc...

Let's get some definitions down... Fraud: that's the label stuck on doctors' inability to remember the insanely complicated rules for how much to bill for a given service.  Such as: 14 point review of systems (13 is not enough and would constitute fraud), full specialty exam must include e.g. fundu...

I don't think the primary focus is automation.....seems like it has to do more with nanotechnology

This is a false premise. There is always enough money, prices just have to come down. So you don't think a deflationary spiral is economically damaging not to mention socially destabalizing and could perhaps lead to a long term downward shift in the demand supply equilibrium point? Rapid deflation ...

9pm on cnbc tonight...might be interesting

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100968210

You realize Kshartle that economics is a social science, right? These policy decisions that are being made are being done so in the context of social demands and pressures. Trying to get people to behave according to some theory is going to be tough when they are hungry and cold.

What if there were not enough slips of paper to pay for evrything the economy could produce? This is a false premise. There is always enough money, prices just have to come down. So you don't think a deflationary spiral is economically damaging not to mention socially destabalizing and could perhap...

The theft is the stolen purchasing power from everyone else. The government stole it. It claimed the right to buy something without offereing anything in return. It did this because it has guns and dungeons to put people in if they refuse to trade stuff for paper. In this case it bought my vote or ...

The theft is the stolen purchasing power from everyone else. The government stole it. It claimed the right to buy something without offereing anything in return. It did this because it has guns and dungeons to put people in if they refuse to trade stuff for paper. In this case it bought my vote or ...

So here's a scenario....I'm trying to figure out who has been robbed here. Since there is so much talk of theft with regards to money printing. Let's say you are sick and in the hospital but you don't have any money for a nurse.So the government prints 40000 dollars and hires a nurse who before tha...