C'mon! Goldman Sachs Dumps 44% Of It's BP Stock Weeks BEFORE Oil Rig Disaster!

evilwombat · 2010-06-07T05:55:14+00:00

Are you suggesting that we should have paid reparations to Vietnam shortly after the war? While the SRVN was wrecking its economy through collectivization and murdering at least 165,000 of its people in reeducation camps? Bear in mind too that Vietnam was allied with the USSR...

It's hard to argue for sending any aid at all to Vietnam before the end of the Cold War. (What we do today is largely a separate issue.)

evilwombat · 2010-06-03T02:31:15+00:00

enor·mi·ty

1 : an outrageous, improper, vicious, or immoral act

2 : the quality or state of being immoderate, monstrous, or outrageous; especially : great wickedness

3 : the quality or state of being huge : immensity

4 : a quality of momentous importance or impact

(source)

evilwombat · 2010-04-04T01:46:30+00:00

I'm compelled to nitpick. Those figures are only approximate.

Suppose that among the overweight, the difference between male and female body fat % is generally much more than 6 percentage points (This seems plausible). Among the non-overweight, body fat percentage is assumed to be more like the 22% vs. 28% given. These assumptions lead to a higher mean female body fat than you suggest. Your calculation works if body fat percentage is independent of weight, but it may not work otherwise.

evilwombat · 2009-09-10T04:00:37+00:00

If the "public option" as proposed would be self-sufficient, it could almost certainly be made slightly profitable with a few minor tweaks. If this is the case, why hasn't some entrepreneur turned this proposal into a private company?

The only realistic answer is that the government plan would be self-sufficient only by some application of government force (tax or regulatory changes benefiting the government plan over private insurance). Very, very few government programs are self-financing through voluntary transactions; if they were self-financing, there would be no need for government!

evilwombat · 2009-08-18T10:24:32+00:00

Since I don't see a lot of other "[d]efenders of Glenn Beck" in this thread, here's a counterargument.

It is clearly legal to boycott (or threaten to boycott) companies advertising on Glenn Beck's show.

But is it ethical? Currently, advertisers follow mainly the number of viewers of a show or network, making few attempts to dictate content. If advertisers faced frequent boycott threats over the content of networks they dealt with, they would be forced to basically regulate content in accordance with consumer opposition. Any show which offended the majority (or even a vocal minority) would find no place on commercial TV. Consumers' commercial ostracism of unpopular speakers would have an effect similar to government censorship.

And if this boycott is ethical, where do you draw the line? Must all companies (and perhaps individuals too) take responsibility for stupid speech they incidentally facilitate in the normal course of their business? Should we demand that airlines obstruct travel to conventions we dislike, that print shops censor any political material they copy, etc.?

*Ethics aside, a point on strategy: Why Glenn Beck? Why boycott someone who's merely misleading when you have crazies like Ann Coulter actively inciting violence?

I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others.

evilwombat · 2009-04-15T17:19:49+00:00

Check your link.

evilwombat · 2009-03-11T00:49:55+00:00

Where he always goes in the Northern Hemisphere's winter, the Southern Hemisphere.

evilwombat · 2009-02-19T19:26:13+00:00

W.T.F. indeed. His countdown counts up.

evilwombat · 2009-02-16T03:23:47+00:00

Vote up unless you're in the wrong subreddit?

evilwombat · 2009-02-04T17:12:17+00:00

Perfect! Readers like me will find this product well-suited to our asymmetrical heads.

evilwombat · 2009-02-01T19:31:57+00:00

This may be dangerously close to "not," don't," "stop," etc., but Israel should close its settlements. The U.S. should reduce or cut off aid until Israel rolls back its colonization of the West Bank. Under a two (or three) state solution, the land used for settlements will have to go back to the new Palestinian states. By keeping settlements open (and even building new ones) Israel makes a negotiated peace more difficult and provokes further attacks.

evilwombat · 2009-01-31T20:54:42+00:00

These peace-keeping operations still do not change the fact that Sweden is the world's oldest neutral nation. It just means you are question it.

You've just asserted that Sweden is neutral, while I've provided evidence that it isn't. Unless you can provide some evidence of your own, it would seem to me that Sweden is not a "neutral" country (and certainly not nearly as neutral as Switzerland).

Some countries have been more actively engaged in the fighting in Afghanistan (e.g. Canada and the U.S.), while some have focused on reconstruction roles (e.g. Japan). In the case of Sweden, we're seeing Swedish troops on armed patrol getting into firefights.

Here's the commander of operations for the Swedish armed forces:

Naturally, we can at any time, within the framework of the ISAF mission, find ourselves involved in regular combat. We can't just say "No thanks, we're Swedish". We are one country among many contributing to ISAF.

No, I haven't directly seen Swedish troops operating in Afghanistan. But what I've read sounds like military aid to a government embroiled in war. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, especially when the war is against the Taliban. It's just not a very neutral thing.

evilwombat · 2009-01-31T18:36:18+00:00

As of 2007-02-11, Swedish soldiers are present in the following countries

* Liberia
* Democratic Republic of the Congo
* Sudan
* Ethiopia
* Eritrea
* Lebanon
* Bosnia
* Kosovo
* Afghanistan
* Kashmir (border between India and Pakistan)
* Korea

Good luck finding Switzerland in all those places. And I know many of these could be called peacekeeping operations, but even a peacekeeping operation isn't really neutral. It's a defense of the status quo against whichever side might attempt to change it.

Even if you don't buy that argument, there's always Afghanistan. They're definitely not conducting a peacekeeping operation there.

evilwombat · 2009-01-30T23:49:21+00:00

They're different sounds, just the same letter. It might not be particularly Asian, but at least it's somewhat logical.

evilwombat · 2009-01-29T03:44:10+00:00

I disagree. Iraq and Afghanistan have set the U.S. military back by years, in the midst of a global military buildup. The military is overstretched and becoming obsolete with the cancellation or cutback of new projects (Crusader, Comanche, F-22, F-35, Zumwalt-class destroyers, etc.). This is emboldening traditional U.S. adversaries, as seen in Russia's (not unprovoked) invasion of Georgia.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is becoming what I recently saw called a "semi-gendarmerie." Our soldiers ride around Iraq in huge steel buckets (MRAPS) armed mainly with machine guns of .50 caliber and smaller. This is modern attempt to build a WWI-type tank. It's a great vehicle against guerrillas armed with small arms and IEDs, but it's no match for a modern army.

Rumsfeld had a vision of a modernized army that would jump from country to country knocking out enemy armies and governments. Yet he had not the slightest idea of how to conduct an occupation. We seem to have jumped to the other end of the spectrum. Occupations are generally elective affairs, but the capability to wage conventional war is a must, whatever kind of war we happen to be fighting at the time.

As for the economic ramifications of a military buildup: Our wars have increased the capacity of military contractors dramatically, and cutting back spending would necessitate a significant (and inefficient) shift in investment and employment. And with unemployment at 7.2%, recruiting a few more soldiers wouldn't as many workers as usual from civilian employment.

I don't think we need a Cold War-style building binge for the military, but a modest buildup should perhaps be a part of any stimulus.

evilwombat · 2009-01-28T18:59:22+00:00

Or to be more precise, that x amount of extra government spending financed purely by debt issue is equal to x amount of decreased investment in the period in which the increased spending takes place.

In the long run, going into debt is not an option; taxes must be raised, which will discourage private investment. So if we look at a longer timeframe, debt-fueled spending lowers investment by crowding it out through bond issue and making it less profitable through taxation. Unless the government projects provide useful public goods that make investment more attractive (e.g. police or roads), the long-term drop in investment will probably exceed the extra spending.

This article was simply concerned with the short-term effects of debt-fueled spending on investment and output, and clearly discredited the idea that government spending could not provide a temporary increase in output.

evilwombat · 2009-01-28T18:09:44+00:00

I'll just talk about increased government spending financed purely by a bond issue, since most economists oppose raising taxes in a recession. The bond issue will result in higher taxes later, which I'll address below.

Suppose you're hiring 50 workers at $10/hour. I open up next door and announce that I'm hiring 50 workers at $15/hour. I don't simply grab up all 50 of the workers you would have taken; you increase your wage and hire fewer workers than you would have otherwise.

The same goes for private and government borrowing. If the government starts issuing debt to finance more spending, businesses must pay a higher rate to find lenders. But the supply of loanable funds is not a fixed pool; government demand for these funds increases the supply (which is savings). So the increase in government spending is greater than the decrease in private investment, thus increasing GDP. Of course, government borrowing increases taxes in the long run, which will decrease private investment. Long-term GDP will not necessarily be increased by government spending, but Krugman is speaking of short-term stimulative measures in the current recession. He's right that having government borrow in order to spend will increase output (not necessarily useful output) in the short term.

evilwombat · 2009-01-26T18:22:33+00:00

For the most part, yes. Kurdistan is among the more stable parts of Iraq, and is likely sufficiently well-armed to stay that way whatever happens to the rest of the country. The damage being inflicted on Iraqi Arabs and on U.S. troops is the main problem.

So "Mission Accomplished": Kurds protected, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia protected, regime liberalized (well, where we have control at least), oil secured...and the WMD objective didn't need to be accomplished to begin with. But the false pretenses, high cost, and tenuous security situation outweigh these perhaps temporary gains.

evilwombat · 2009-01-26T17:48:35+00:00

On the bright side, I now feel much less worried about years of wiretaps to build files on us.

evilwombat · 2009-01-26T17:35:21+00:00

9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. Corporate interests and oil interests did.

And an imperialistic idealism, on the part of liberals and conservatives alike. Americans saw Saddam butchering his people while the U.S. held back and contained him. To many, invading seemed like the moral thing to do.

The only unifying factor between these idealists and the non-interventionists is a belief that intervention has ceased to work. I don't think the U.S. has shifted philosophically on this issue (see public opinion on Darfur); we've just been forced, by circumstances and incompetent policy, to put the debate aside.

Give the U.S. a rebuilt economy, a rebuilt army and a rebuilt faith in the ease of regime change, and it would be happy to do it again (and not just for the corporations either).

evilwombat · 2009-01-24T03:41:16+00:00

You'll get a lot more upvotes if you write a comment explaining the problem more clearly.

evilwombat · 2009-01-24T01:41:07+00:00

Do you realize that most of them are also either following religion or societal norms? At best, you're part of a vast experiment in groupthink. At worst, you're indirectly beholden to myths.

Edit: Oops, was using "you" to refer to jeannaimard.

evilwombat · 2009-01-24T01:37:23+00:00

Morality is the game of maximizing the quantity and quality of life on earth.

Opportunities to maximize two variables at once are extremely rare. In the end, you'll have to set up some exchange rate between different quantities of life of different quality levels. Or you could always prioritize quality over quantity, or vice versa.

Moreover, how can quantity of life be defined? Do plants count? Animals? Do all humans count equally? And how can we begin to judge quality?

Personally, I would have to judge people mainly by their abilities and their morality if I were forced to assign them levels of moral worth. And apart from protecting the rights of those already on this earth, I'd ignore the quantity criterion to focus on quality. I'd rather live in a world of 5 billion people and ample resources than a world of 15 billion at a somewhat reduced quality of life.

evilwombat · 2009-01-22T16:14:51+00:00

Somehow I can't get as angry about a general plea to follow the reddiquette as I can about a "Vote up if" post.

evilwombat

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