From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Date: Sat Feb 01 1997 - 13:36:47 MST
Jim Legg wrote:
>
>
> > Despite billions in profits last year, the fast-food chain
> > represented by the popular clown mascot pocketed $1.6 million in
> > taxpayers' money in 1996, the Libertarian Party noted today.
> >
>
> Nice try, but you're seeing the "system by whatever name" from the inside,
> whereas I am seeing it from the outside to my advantage. For example, you
> are expressing by quoting sentiments such as the above you are doing
> stirring almost patriotic fervor. Someone would think that you view money
> as an actual finite resource not to be wasted or loose value. Heck, if the
> people who print it for a fee thought it was valuable wouldn't they be
> trying to keep its value up.
>
> There are new ways of finding communication value other than in price, and
> that don't jeopardize safety. (which I trust is of paramount value to this
> discussion)
#1 I haven't heard you state any reasonable alternatives to price
signals.
#2 Who or what's safety is jeopardized by price signals?
#3 Given there are a finite nuber of people on this planet, each with a
finite number of hours in the day to do work, and with a finite level
of skills, as well as with a finite amount of resources to apply those
skills and hours to to increase or add value, it is obvious that there
would be a finite source of money. To think otherwise would be to risk
the sort of chaotic insanity seen in the "print more if we run out"
attitude of the idiots running formerly communist states like Russia,
who have no concept of rational economic management.
#4 The fact that our money does not need to be tied to a fixed value of
a resource like gold or silver anymore is evidence that it has attained
value in and of itself as a symbol of productive value of people,
machines, and resources. The actions of the Fed here in the US, and
other national banks elsewhere to maintain the stability of the money
supply is for three reasons: 1) because since cash is mostly in a form
that wears out (the average paper dollar bill has an average life of
less than one year, due to its flimsiness) they need to track its flow
and maintain a healthy supply of said forms of money. 2) Because people
as individuals change their productive and consumptive behavior over
time. 3) Because resources relative scarcity changes over time in
response to the opening and closing of markets and resource bases to
exploitation due to both politics and price signal (for example, due to
the end of the cold war, Russia is now the largest producer and exporter
of petroleum in the world. Adding their resource base in this area has
greatly contributed to the decline in energy costs to what is now the
lowest relative energy resource costs in recorded human history. They
have also contributed to historically low metals prices, and are helping
to make up for the impact of recent lumbering restrictions here in the
US on the market prices for wood products.)
I HIGHLY recommend that you first take a few REAL courses in economics
before you go spouting off about its supposed obsolescence.
--
TANSTAAFL!!!
Michael Lorrey
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#!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL
@k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_
]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256;
&S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}
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