pessimizer

Exactly. There's no global police force that comes to foreclose on your country when your debt hits a certain level. What happens is that when people have doubts about your ability to pay your debts o…

Your confusion is based on the fact that there's no such thing as a "Treasury IOU." It's a made-up prejudicial term to trivialize the Treasury bonds held by Social Security, used by people who argue t…

>Is there a well known relationship between government debt and private debt? Yes. "[...T]he difference between the government budget deficit and the trade deficit must equal the difference betwee…

I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. You cannot, by definition, simultaneously maintain a trade deficit and reduce the sum of public and private debt. I hate to trot this link out again, but: …

Are you sure that the publisher paid Samuel Clemens, or are you just assuming that? Things like that are often directed through lawyers in order to maintain the pseudonym. Writers often take pseudonym…

Depends on your definition of close friends, and your definition of acquaintances. If acquaintances include the boyfriend of someone you somewhat knew in high school, then my use of a pseudonym that I…

I think it's that you're giving them access based on a picture of a lollipop, while having absolutely no idea who you're giving that access to. Never take candy from strangers.

No, it's getting information some random website can access by offering you a picture of a lollipop. Stranger danger?

Even non-MMTers. If you are from the US, you have to pay your taxes in US dollars, and judgments in court against you are payable in USD.

And I'd be able to buy bitcoin from drug dealers trying to convert bitcoin into cash, buy shoes from someone with the bitcoin, and that someone could sell that bitcoin to someone looking to buy drugs …

I think more that it needs some utility over other currencies within some context. That utility margin will bring stability.

I beg to differ. If people can buy drugs or launder money easier with bitcoin than with coin coin, people are going to want bitcoin.

Do I support a minimum wage? Yes. Do I think a minimum wage is a right? Only in the jurisdictions that recognize it as one.

That an individual gets to decide how their own works should be treated is not the most important right, it's not a right at all. It's a limitation on other people's rights to imitate or reproduce thi…

A big multi-billion $ business deciding to dictate its own behavior or end is not the same as dictating law, even if the law reacts by changing in order to preserve the business. The current system, w…

They may not be able to guess whether you in particular or your children are Jewish, but if I can guess your name from your sex, zipcode, and birthdate, I'm pretty sure that there will be many markers…

How about "The source code is available"?

>Frankly I'm surprised that they keep sinking money into this, they've clearly failed to establish a profitable beach head, meanwhile google is making money hand over fist in the exact same domain…

Yes, I do that there are a number of people at Apple spending a large part of their days figuring out how to prevent people from using their own purchased items in the way that they wish to. Lawyers, …

I'm not sure that comparing networking vendors to arms dealers to repressive regimes is the best way to defend them/yourself.

Fact: It isn't necessary for a majority to want something for it to make the top slot on HN.

I'm not sure what the difference is between something that would make one better informed and something being a better source of information.

I'm not going to do your research for you, I'm just saying that whether either demonised or praised Bush is irrelevant to the claim that was being made - unless you're making specific claims that Bush…

I'd like to add that being useful isn't a negative for something's properties as a currency - for example, the reason cigarettes become a currency in a lot of jail/P.O.W. situations is because they ar…

The world already works like that. You can buy money from countries other than the US, you know.

You're missing the point of the frumforum post. It was: if you were planning for the future, which source of predictions (the WSJ editorial page or Krugman's column) would have been a more accurate gu…

I really adore using Erlang with Webmachine, jQuery Taconite, and erlydtl for web projects. It's usually not a morally safe option for other people's projects (because what are the odds of them findin…

I don't think its outcome-based, its expected utility based, which is a present value, not a future one.

I'm not siding with ugh. I don't think he was arguing with you. I find your argument an excellent way to reframe an argument about accessibility into an argument to build a more complete and functiona…

The major difference between disrespecting the flag in Mexico and burning the flag in the US is that burning the flag in the US is legal.