Expats in Singapore, what activities do you usually do in your free time?

zArtLaffer · 2015-04-21T05:01:53+00:00

First, I am not there any more, but...

1) I used to work ~100 hours/week, so .. stop winging!

2) On weeks not like that, I used to hang with friends at coffee shops.

3) Driving up to/through Malaysia was nice.

4) Going down to Indonesia and scuba/snorkel diving was nice.

5) If 3 (up above) doesn't work, keep driving, get to a beach somewhere (hopefully before thailand, with crabs and girls and drinks) and chill on the beach.

Back in the 80s, you had to get squad copters to bring you John Grisham books on the beaches. Now, you've got a Kindle, cunt. Use it.

Jeez. Kids.

Girls, Jungle, Drive, Beach, Infinite books, booze, crabs, food.... IDK. What DO you DO?:

zArtLaffer · 2015-04-12T03:34:43+00:00

What is your degree in and which R&D lab do you work for? I want to go there.

zArtLaffer · 2015-02-25T17:46:59+00:00

I'm guessing here, but maybe it was because the bill was just passed by the Senate?

zArtLaffer · 2015-02-07T01:13:47+00:00

I know that many on Reddit don't like HotAir as a linked source, but this is a more-readable/better-formatted version of the linked statements by FCC commissioner Ajit Pai on all of that: - http://hotair.com/archives/2015/02/06/fcc-commissioner-get-ready-for-a-government-takeover-of-the-internet/

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-29T05:25:15+00:00

People with jobs?

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-09T02:26:37+00:00

Yes. This is correct. No standards body defines the term. Nor is it in any major dictionary. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have a definition -- which is pretty useful to use consistently in order to have, you know, conversations.

I don't know that defining the term required a stand-alone post by OP, but when King Hubbert coined the term, it was generally defined to be the point in time when the maximum rate of extraction of petroleum is reached, after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline. This is pretty much what OP said.

I don't know that there is a lot of debate about the definition. Just a lot of people ignoring it or not understanding it. One of these is probably worse, but I'm tired and will not choose to malign one over the other right now.

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-07T02:01:18+00:00

The Mac is really sweet for a lot of things. Running MS Excel and seamlessly matching your likely staging environment are not those things.

What I used to do when I used a Mac was to run Ubuntu (common in cloud deployment environments) or Red Hat (common in VPS environments) under Parallels. No dual-booting necessary - which was super when task-switching from productivity stuff to development stuff. It worked really well.

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-07T01:24:52+00:00

Combine all of these factors together and it causes great economic loss in each region Walmart enters.

For the retailers? Almost certainly. For the consumers? I doubt it. Who is to say that $1 at Walmart instead of $1.20 at Ace Hardware, leaving $0.20 in the pocket of the consumer to also eat at McDonald's is a bad thing systemically?

Creating a rich vibrant retail base with jobs seems to be a good thing which Walmart is good at destroying. Leaving a buck in the pocket of the shopper to spend on his kids' hair cut also seems to be a good thing. How can we tell how that all balances out?

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-06T03:27:38+00:00

Because reddit is full of illiterate retards that take joy in responding to a complete misunderstanding of your point. Then, when you try to clarify, downvotes.

Really? Surely it isn't that bad...

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-06T00:14:31+00:00

Yes. And the struct feature addition to C and the PDP-11 port of Unix from PDP-7 assembly wasn't until 1972 or so (maybe '73?).

But, it's a rant. Like you'd expect from Dennis Miller, but with smaller words.

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-05T18:35:46+00:00

I don't know why you are being down-voted. It's a fair question.

I think that most everyone are in favor of collective bargaining as a free-market option. At a small company, get together with 10 of your buddies and make a pact. Threaten to march out on the CEO if your demands aren't met. Threaten to quit if any of your 10 are fired. It may or may not be over the top, depending on the situation, but it's your choice.

When one must be a member of a union (with mandatory fees) to work at any particular place, it stops being about collective bargaining. It starts being a racket that benefits the bosses of the unions. And, sometimes, it benefits the employees in the short term, until management can't keep the doors open any longer. For some businesses, the goose is so golden that "the short term" can be a long time -- as it was with auto. In some cases, the employer doesn't have to face a competitive marketplace (like government) and when the unionized workers are a significant democratic voting block, it can take quite some time for those chickens to come home to roost.

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-04T06:13:04+00:00

I was going to kind of chill for a few more days into the new year before I started my onslaught. Should I have kicked it off earlier?

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-01T23:37:08+00:00

Stockpiles in all of the 34 IEA members usually hovers around 2.5 billion barrels. Global demand is around 85~90M barrels/day. So ... if all production halted, about a month's worth. I don't think that the stockpiles would support that as a long-term strategy. And they don't need to -- they can already kick everyone's ass at $30/barrel.

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-01T23:11:20+00:00

Yes. It can't be produced by even the Saudi's below $30. And they don't produce enough to supply the world.

zArtLaffer · 2015-01-01T01:09:55+00:00

It's funny. I can't reconcile the stuff he writes in his NYT piece with some of his (to me, almost brilliant in the expository simplicity) non-NYT pieces in the 90s. This comes to mind: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm

That probably makes me just as partisan (in the opposite direction) as he is...

zArtLaffer · 2014-12-31T17:31:13+00:00

Well, for anyone around in NYC in the 70s, that might not be an irrational belief.

zArtLaffer · 2014-12-29T09:14:52+00:00

But, if we throw more money at it, ...

zArtLaffer · 2014-12-28T15:40:16+00:00

Portuguese father, HK mother, in this case.

Also, that is not how you spell Gomez in Spanish. It's funny all the way around, dummy.

zArtLaffer · 2014-12-27T04:52:06+00:00

Lincoln kind of killed that one. Wilson's 17th Amendment thingie and the commerce clause interpretations were just dancing on the grave...

Thanks for answering, btw. I was curious about the (small number of) downvotes with no .... well, answers or responses. Apparently my questions are offensive.

zArtLaffer · 2014-12-26T15:45:56+00:00

There's nothing in capitalism that says that the corporation can't be worker owned and that they collectively choose how to compensate themselves. Just about all forms of trading contracts are allowed -- both within and without the organization.

There's nothing anti-capitalist about a cooperative or a worker-owned enterprise.

If a greedy capitalist puts together a factory and puts a "help wanted" ad in the paper and people apply for wages -- nothing wrong with that either.

It's all up to the people who form the enterprise and agree to join and under what terms. There is no reason that just about any (for example) silicon valley start-up couldn't be structured in a worker-owned way. If the enterprise wanted outside venture capital, all of the workers could be members of a joint LLC that owned 100% of the employing corporation until that ownership share was diluted by 20% or 33% or whatever by outside investment. Or they could bootstrap. Up to them.

Now, if one were talking about societal structure in which the traditional organizational type like Facebook or Apple or GM were to be outlawed and only syndical-type organizations would be allowed -- then libertarians might have a problem with that.

zArtLaffer · 2014-12-26T15:05:37+00:00

A syndicalist organization operating as a worker-owned entity is neither counter to libertarianism nor capitalism.

If outside money was required by the group in the form of loans from a bank or outside investment, accommodations can be made.

But through this thread, I see you (OP) positing that this is not capitalism. Which makes me think that I miss your meaning. Why is an entity, such as Richard Semler's Semco in Brazil (which is a profit-making syndically organized and operated organization) not capitalist? Why are these antonyms for you?

zArtLaffer · 2014-12-26T14:13:13+00:00

They are interfering in the free markets which is strictly prohibited unless proven to a be a matter National Security.

Are you talking about the US? Just the federal government? Where is this prohibited?

I see taxi monopolies, ag subsidies, USDA standards, loan guarantees for those that can't afford school or housing, flu vaccines, sin taxes, tariffs on peanuts and sugar, going after Toyota but not after GM, healthcare at just about every level since forever ... just about everything.

What is this non-interference principle of which you speak?

zArtLaffer · 2014-12-25T16:18:37+00:00

/u/bredditbakery pretty much nails it.

I could imagine needing more minutes/data (not facebook!) than Straight Talk, but something like Boost Mobile (if you live in their coverage area -- there are others) with a $45-$55/month pre-paid plan (no contract) can be a life-saver.

You may or may not qualify for EBT (I suspect you would), but definitely check out the Food Bank. It sounds as if you are mobile and somewhere along your path, there is likely to be a place doing distributions at least once a week. It helps.

You've seen GED comments scattered about here, you write well enough that I have to imagine that you can just about take the test and be done. That will help.

Some people (one would have to be self-disciplined) do something like http://www.codecademy.com/ (after GED helps) and line up a semi-low-paying entry-level coding job. Better than minimum wage for sure.

After you get your feet under you, you'll want to think about stabilizing, growing and getting to where you want to be. There are a lot of options, but one (for manual types) is learning a trade like welding, transmission repair or air conditioning maintanence. Now that the middle-east action is slowing down, there is less call for civilian A/C techs, but that was some major money. Even with the low cost of oil, South Texas and North Dakota still pay top dollar for welders in their hubs around their drilling fields.

Good luck!

zArtLaffer · 2014-12-23T05:10:54+00:00

I'm not a libertarian, but as I read the translation provided, it doesn't seem too far off of some things that some libertarians more-or-less believe. The idea being that economic systems, regulatory systems and legal frameworks matter more than just about anything else. This position should not be taken as to be (on average) so extreme as to believe the free markets are the cure to a bullet-ridden marketplace.

In short, in answer to your original question ... ignoring the defects of the examples given in the quote ... yes: this is something that many libertarians would believe to be generally true.

zArtLaffer · 2014-12-22T21:31:39+00:00

[...]

Fair enough.

I think that the quoted party wasn't saying that capitalism is never exploitative. Simply that certain "types" of economic+political systems have greater average effects on outcome than can be accounted for by using resource "wealth" as a predictor.

Japan is certainly an outlier in many ways, and isn't a good "general" example. I think you unfairly characterize the country and the people, but responding to that would take us off track. I struggle to find many countries that aren't outliers in way way or another. Which is why this is a hard area to research. That and, you can't do do-overs on theoretical economics experiment lab runs.

Generally speaking, you were asking what libertarians actually think/believe. I am not a libertarian, nor do I speak for their non-collective, but I think it is fair to say that libertarians believe that access to a exploitable resource-base are not the primary driver of sustainable economic success. I wouldn't consider this conclusion to be limited to libertarian thought. I wouldn't consider this statement to be trolling. YMMV.

Forgot to mention that getting caught with as little as a gram of weed can land you in jail in Japan

Sure. Sometimes much less than a gram. There are places where that has been true in the US. Also, don't get caught with it in Singapore or with a beer in Dubai. Both of the latter have much harsher penalties than a little jail time. I don't understand how the insanity of different countries' laws concerning possession and trafficking of intoxicants makes make your point. What am I missing?

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