Topic: Politics does not matter. Only power. - page 2. (Read 3032 times)

Copper falls outside the domain of our dialog. Why are you bringing up copper? Once again, it appears you're suffering from reading comprehension. Maybe you should start back at the beginning of our conversation?

Two words.

Julian Simons.

Sure thing. Peak copper has been a worry for decades now, and the price has risen as a result of a more restricted supply. Partially as a result of this, processors are not made out of copper, but mostly silicon.

"Measured by mass, silicon makes up 27.7% of the Earth's crust and is the second most abundant element in the crust, with only oxygen having a greater abundance. Silicon is usually found in the form of complex silicate minerals, and less often as silicon dioxide (silica, a major component of common sand). Pure silicon crystals are very rarely found in nature." -Wikipedia

We are also moving away from using copper in wires, towards fiber optic cables which again are made out of silicon or plastic.

As the cost of copper went up (and the value of the dollar depreciated) the federal reserve stopped making copper pennies.

While the amount of recycling hasn't increased much, around 45% of copper used is from recycled sources.

So, as you can see, as the price of a resource goes up, people reduce their consumption, find alternatives, and recycle. Exactly as one would predict in a free market.


I could talk about peak oil and how every doom and gloom prediction over the past half a century has been proven hilariously wrong and how proven oil reserves just keep growing to no ones surprise that has learned some decent economics, but the subject has been talked to death...
As the price of oil has gone up, it has gotten profitable to get oil from more difficult to reach places, and new technologies have been developed to get oil (Frakking, anyone?)
If the mythical beast of peak oil ever does arrive, a free market will be able to handle it just fine. Price will go up, demand will shrink, alternatives will be found.


Do you have any examples anywhere where a private company used up all of its privately owned resources to exhaustion?


Things you're not going to read...
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Debunking-The-Myth-Of-Peak-Oil-Why-The-Age-Of-Cheap-Oil-Is-Far-From-Over-Part-1.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=MrlUAAAAYAAJ&pg=SL1-PA54#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/04/19/peak-copper-worldwatch-institute-gets-it-wrong-again/

Wouldn't it be nice if it worked like that in the real world? It doesn't. Do you understand that? Please, you have to look at real world examples, not textbook theories.

*groan*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptote


The demand on the resource reduces long before you're looking at the very last ounce of the resource in question.

It is pretty wild...

This thread is a good example of why just education cannot overcome the centralization of power. Some people vehemently support such power structures.

Like those who support fiat and Keynsian economics, they will fight Bitcoin. Bitcoin just has to be a better alternative and prove itself as such.

Ergo, the resource has been harvested to exhaustion. You just admitted it right there. The reason the resource gets harvested to exhaustion is precisely because of the high price. When a lot of money can be made from the sale of just a couple units, a great deal of effort, energy and technology is applied to harvesting the last remnants of the resource.


Notice your usage of the word 'approaches' twice. In the first case, the resource is getting to zero. In the second case, any demand above zero is enough demand to purchase the last quantity of the resource.

Ultimately, your ultimate failure in understanding the dynamics here is your desire to apply the classic supply and demand curve to two entirely different scenarios. In the case we have been discussing, the free market is a destructive force.

government didnt use to exist, now it does exist. we used to have anarchy, now we do not. government necessarily evolved out of anarchy. the only problem is your use of the word the. we are living in a natural conclusion of an anarchist state, not the natural conclusion.

No trouble at all & no.

You really went out of your way to make that joke. Could you please come back with the definition of "instigate"?


My feeling is that technology is going to make the governmental hierarchy obsolete.

It's getting harder and harder for the government to justify it's intrusion into education, mail, personal defense, money production, and anything else they want to put their grubby fingers into.

I hope that there will be a peaceful revolution as government withers away, but we all know how jealously governments guard their power.

It took two morons at two typewriters to to kill of tens of millions of people?  Well, that sure lets some air out of your balloon.
Or did each one of them slaughter tens of millions with a typewriter, doubling the casualties?
Of course, i'm allowing for the possibility that they shared a single typewriter, taking turns using it on their murdering sprees.  Was that the case?
Why were they not stopped by smarter & better armed people?  A fountain pen in the right hands...

It doesn't matter that people are willing to enter into the business of harvesting if there aren't resources to be harvested. As the amount of the resource approaches zero, the price goes up, and the demand approaches zero. The resource is in this way never used to exaustion.

Since the price is high, it indicates to entrepreneurs that finding an alternative, or finding new sources, or recovery of old sources, is profitable. So more money is likely to go into research and development of recycling techniques, exploration, artificial synthesizing, and research into alternatives. It's not "[tied up in the higher price of the resource]".

That is an apt description of both Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx.

I would say that the power gets into the wrong hands with complacency and the fact that for it to get into the right hands in the first place takes a lot of effort. Effort that cannot be continued forever.

My suggestion on how to defeat it? I have no idea, I am still mulling things over from an eyes wide open point of view trying to figure it out. But for sure, if the US government fell and it was replaced with some "libertarian Constitution", it would only last for a while as is. The new system needs to be so sound in its structure that it can compete against the current power of our government or a coalition of governments. And with the structure to continue.

We need a system that is to democracy what democracy was to kingdoms and dictatorships. Just as Bitcoin is to gold as gold is to fiat. I believe we are at a point in time where we are ready for it.

We always have and we always will. When I am getting ready for work, I sometimes think about our ancestors on the plains of Africa guarding a kill. Keeping the kill from the lionesses, rival clans, and whatnot.

Have we really changed? Isn't it that our tools today are court orders, threats of punitive monetary action, and blatant contract violations?

For evidence I offer up the political affiliation of supreme court nominees and the gyrations of SCOTUS from liberal to conservative. Consider how narrowly each case is decided and how easily the case might have gone to the minority - but for one justice.

Is that lady justice, blind, weighing the facts before her? Or is it the underlying power structure asserting their influence to keep their fresh kill for themselves?

Ridiculous. Learn to read. Point out where I said that.


Your conclusion is based on a false premise.


How does that counter anything I said?


Again, you don't really get it. 'Tis sad. When the price goes through the roof, new suppliers are willing to enter into the business of harvesting.


Why is there less demand? We're working on the premise that the price is going up. Hellloooo? Anyone home? The price is going up due to demand. If the price wasn't going up, we wouldn't be having this conversation.


It's happening every damn day.

I could say the same...

You're saying that the demand will go up as the price goes up, and production will ramp up until the resource is exhausted.

Again. That's not how the real world works.

Prices go up because it's difficult to expand production. The higher prices are, this indicates that expanding supply is difficult.

As the resource dwindles away, there are by definition less suppliers. (Because there is less of the resource to get.)
You can't just keep expanding production because the price is high. Since they can't expand production, they look for alternatives, or find ways to recover the resource.

There is also less demand.

Suppliers don't increase (directly from nature), demand doesn't stay the same, and the resource isn't used to exhaustion. It hasn't happened, isn't happening, and wont ever happen in a free market.

Maybe you failed reading comprehension 101? Wow.

Read the post again.

What the f.. I don't even... Where do I begin?

The price isn't "in the resource". People didn't wake up one day and say, "Shit, I'm missing $5.00! Oh, the price of fishnets in Kenya went up. That's where that money went."

No. Prices don't pull demand with them, in fact that's exactly the opposite of what the supply and demand curve shows.

If the price of gasoline goes to $100.00/gal people don't say, "Look how valuable that is! I better buy more!" They reduce their consumption, and entrepreneurs look for alternatives that cost $99.99/gal or less, or they drill for oil in places that is profitable at those high rates.

No dude, that's not how the real world works. Name one single privately owned resource that was harvested to complete annihilation by a private business.

When the price goes up, guess what the harvesters do? They are incentivized to up the energy, effort, and technology to continue harvesting. And it's funny that you mention that "As the price goes up" as a reason for entrepreneurs to find alternatives. Why would they look for alternatives when the money is in the resource that is going up in price? And why is that price going up? Because there is demand out there.

So what happens? The resource is harvested until it's gone! All gone! And remember that it undergoes an irreversible transformation upon consumption. So it's really gone from the world forever. Furthermore, guess what? That resource might have been attached to something else that takes collateral damage upon harvesting. So that something else is gone too. Forever.


Uhh, no. Something does indeed break.