Then I guess you won a lot of money betting that these would be the two locations. If not you missed out. Let me know who is going to win the Super Bowl!
Not true. Jcrew Factory does $5 flat rate, or more frequently offers it free. A prepaid label is also provided with the shipment. And unlike Amazon, these clothes are not add-on or pantry-like items (i.e. need to spend some crazy amount of money to NOT pay for shipping, even with Prime), and won't be last-miled by their crappy service or Lasership.
J Crew charges for return shipping even when they ship out for free, just FYI. I'd consider that more of a problem than Amazon's $25 add-on program (which generally isn't relevant for clothing anyway).
The USA is really large, similar to the old story about blind men encountering an elephant and having ridiculous observations about elephants based on their very limited experience of elephants. Likewise work work work is a coastie thing specifically the worst infection is in New England although its getting worse out west.
Away from the coasts nobody is looked down on for joining the military for a couple years or the peace corps or going for missionary or volunteer work. Go find yourself, go work off some energy, come back calm and ready to settle down. On the coasts, people who do stuff like that are hated, reviled, made fun of.
The US you describe doesn't exist. Military is acceptable work, peace corps, that's only something rich people who don't need to do real work do. Your coasts are pretty small too because outside of a few major cities, the highest calling you can answer in the US is killing brown people for your country, yes, even in New England.
Hell, I'm looked down at by my in-laws because IT isn't 'real work.'
Choose to try to learn how to play an instrument, or some other artistic endeavor and the first thing everyone will ask you is 'how do you plan to make money with that?' You'll get a lot of 'that's nice dear, but how do you intend to live.' You will be met with nothing but condescension because you are not perusing work. Stick with not working and you'll be 'that weirdo down the street.'
> ready to settle down
And work like an adult because you're not an adult and worthy of being treated like one until you work.
People pay lip service to letting people expand their horizons and bettering themselves right before they tell you to get back to work.
Simply because I said the US is an example of one way does not mean other country is an example of the other, which is what the OP I was responding to was talking about. The US is just one of the worst examples of your worth being tied to your work.
You and a friend are stranded on an island. You both spend all your working hours catching fish by hand in order to eat.
You use some leisure time to build a fishing rod, which enables just one of you to catch enough fish to feed you both.
It would be foolish to destroy the fishing rod to preserve both your jobs as fishermen. One of you would fish and the other would do something else, like build shelter and cut firewood.
It's just the two of you, so you don't literally exchange in barter, but an implicit exchange takes place when you share the fish, shelter and firewood.
You both enjoy a better standard of living thanks to the productivity increase created by the fishing rod.
A modern economy is much more complex but the same fundamental principle applies.
The ride-hailing apps make taxi drivers more productive by helping them connect with customers faster.
Now it takes fewer taxi drivers to satisfy the demands of customers. This frees up the labor time of the remaining taxi drivers to produce additional goods or services.
There is certainly temporary pain endured by workers who are displaced by the innovation. But it is folly to subsidize work that is no longer in demand.
Not sure it takes fewer drivers to satisfy the demands of customers. As Uber like apps make getting a ride cheaper and nicer the useage is presumably going up so there should be more drivers but making less per hour.
I'm not saying that the taxi drivers are right, but your example ignores the education and certification that modern professions require. These days most professions require degrees. Taxi drivers need to be certified and that requires memorizing tons of routes. Taxi drivers are exactly the crowd that doesn't have a college education, severely hampering their mobility to other professions except ones which are worse.
Anyway, just another example of how the analogies the hacker crowd loves so much always fail at closer inspection.
Umm, I'm not sure you understood my point. How are they going to earn more? They don't have degrees to fall back on, and the only skill they have is driving taxis. They're going to be replaced by younger people willing to work for less who rely on GPS instead and aren't hampered by needing any training, certification, or medallions. No one is going to hire someone less qualified than a recent graduate, especially one hoping to earn the same (or more as you claim) as before. Do you really see it as a net gain if a taxi driver ends up bagging groceries? Innovation makes education more important because the more menial/automated stuff is already taken.
I understand your point. I'm asking if you apply the same logic to all innovation.
You are focusing solely on the displacement of taxi drivers and using that as justification to oppose innovation that makes taxi drivers more productive.
Do you oppose bulldozers? Certainly one person who operates a bulldozer can do the work of several who only have shovels. Do you really want to tax the bulldozer operator to pay for people to dig with shovels?
Your premise is wrong: There hardly is any innovation. At least in Europe I've never had any kind of trouble just picking up the phone and, you know, getting a competent cab driver very quickly.
But The U.S. seems to be some third world country that can manufacture nukes and computers but is unable to get the most basic things right.
This apparently applies to banking, the electricity grid, health care and lots of other things that are solved problems in other parts of the world (i.e. no innovation is needed).
First of all, calling the US a third world country us a but much. It has its problems but so does everywhere else.
In the US, I've never had trouble calling to get a taxi. Radio dispatched taxis have been available as long as I can remember everywhere I've lived. Uber is somewhat more convenient because GPS gives my exact location and it lets the driver contact me easily. It's not something crazy innovation but it is easier.
I'm not sure what you're talking about with electricity. The grid is generally reliable though it could stand to be put underground in many areas.
We are behind in banking to be sure but a lot of that has to do with demand and consumer protection laws. No one is screaming for a more secure card when fraud liability is limited to $50 by law and is $0 in practice at most banks.
Healthcare could use an overhaul to be sure. Outcomes and costs are not in line with where they should be. That isn't to say that it us terrible, just that the system needs improvement.
Most of these companies aren't truing to overcome bad. They are trying to overcome good enough.
Yes, you would. But with your remaining time you'd build shelter or firewood, just not as much.
The same principle applies. You still both improved your standard of living. The extent of the improvement depends on the productivity increase afforded by the fishing rod.
The number of professions don't go up, and will certainly diminish in the future. Switching professions as a young person without a dependent family is not all that hard. But as a family father/mother, it's not always possible to spend the time to switch professions. Today most of the jobs have qualification, experience and age requirements.
> There is certainly temporary pain endured by workers who are displaced by the innovation. But it is folly to subsidize work that is no longer in demand.
That should not mean the transition could not be smoothened, though.
Let me comment on your example. In todays economy things are sold, not shared. So I need to have something to give in return for the fish that the fisherman (the guy with the fishing rod) gives me. I can dive for scallops. But another guy comes with a scallop-collecting machine and the fisherman does not need my scallops anymore, as he can buy from him cheaper. So I start guarding their stocks for them in return for fish and scallops to eat. But then they invent an automated system for defence of their stock, so my labour is unnecessary now. I need to eat, so I start farming, and as I can't live on herbs merely, I trade some of my crop for fish and scallops. But one day they start importing it from another island for cheaper, and stop buying from me. I can't support my farm year-round just on my crops, so I switch to herding a flock of sheep, and trade meat for fish, scallops, and herbs. But someone comes and builds a modern meat production plant, and I can't sell cheaper than him, so I'm out of business. Given I can't live on my herds' meat only, I need to move on. And while the island slowly thrives with newcomers as the services are increasing and life is becoming easier, the amount of my opportunities diminish. Finally I start up a little market where I sell stuff that I import and/or buy from local providers in order to earn the money to buy fish, scallops, herbs, meat and other stuff. But comes a big coop and drives me out of business. I resort to taxi driving in order to survive, but apps and ridesharing replace my business. I go around seeking a job, in factories, coops, fishmongers, etc., and I find a job as a cashier in the local coop. But an automatic cash largely diminishes necessity of a cashier, so, I'm moved to the big depot of the coop. There, automation, growingly replaces the need for human labor, and as I'm rather inexperienced, I'm laid off. Because they don't want me to become a hobo and pose 'em a threat, some institution gives me 'unemployment money', so that I can survive. I don't want to survive, I want to live, but I lost the chance to become a white-collar while I was trying to catch on, I didn't have the time to focus on one thing and become a professional. So I sort of live as a dependent of the social welfare system, barely surviving, without human dignity. Furthermore, I'm excluded from some parts of community by social code, and am informally a second-class citizen, as I live off the taxes of others. A family is merely a dream for me, as I don't have the money to support it. And should I already have a family, my kids and my partner are at least frustrated at me as I'm a dysfunctional member of the family, though it's also possible that I'm excluded.
No. I'm not criticising innovation here, but what I tried was to extend your analogy represent it's development more accurately. Some jobs will abruptly die in the coming future, and some people will become unemployed. Up until recently this happened slowly, i.e. it took its time, occupations lost their members one by one, until they had a handful, then only one, then they passed away, left the place to newcomers. But now it's happening more abruptly. In the course of years taxis, an established, centuries old occupation, is becoming obsolete, along with other occupations. If people become unemployed quickly and in bulk without the chance to transition, the transition will happen, but way more troublesome. Innovation will happen, but we must make sure that we won't ruin lifes for it to happen, and account for its consequences, negative or positive.
Why are you sitting on piles of cash (digital or otherwise) such that NIRP would hurt you? It's much more sensible to keep your long-term savings in non-cash vehicles. And your short-term, liquid holdings (rainy day savings fund) doesn't need to be so large that a -1% interest rate will hurt a lot.
But it's fairly simple to see which money holds its value better over time. Gold/silver have held value over millennia while fiat moneys live and die with the states that oversee them.
Yes, gold and silver have held up over millenia. But, for example, gold fell from $1700 to $1100 over the last three years or so. Meanwhile, the dollar has held its value pretty well over that term.
So gold and silver are more stable over decades to millenia. They're more volatile over the short run (months/a few years), presuming a competent central bank.
That's probably true. The whole benefit of a fractional reserve currency is you can manipulate the money supply to smooth out the peaks and valleys, a bit.
On the other, hand the government benefits tremendously from both growth and moderate price inflation, so when one of the "peaks" needs to be moderated a bit it almost never actually happens.
> Money represents an obligation for society to provide you with something of value.
What does that mean?
> many things would work exactly the same if people agreed to pretend that gold was moved from one vault to another instead of actually physically moving gold around.
This is how commodity money works. The dollar (as well as almost all paper currencies) originated as commodity money. The paper dollar was backed by and convertible to gold.
> Money represents an obligation for society to provide you with something of value.
It means that the important part is the obligation and the real value, not the units which get used to track this obligation. Under market-based social norms, if you give someone an awesome massage, then they now "owe you" for it. Perhaps this is in terms of making a website, or cooking lunch, or whatever. The most general form of this is a promise of a favor-not-yet-specified - but that concept needs some unit to measure whether or not you're "even" after making that promise.
The benefit of this is that lots of people like to receive a favor-not-yet-specified, because it can be turned into whatever sort of thing they need most in the future.
In short, that is what money represents - a promise that someone made to provide something of value to whoever winds up with that money.
Now, not any old promise will work well, since the other party wants some kind of guarantee that it can be redeemed later for something of value. This is where the banking system come into play: it creates money by convincing debtors to sign believable contracts to pay the bank back. In the past, it used gold and silver. Notes were convertible to hard currency at banks, and there was a general expectation that you could trade those for the things you wanted at a later point of time. But again, it was that expectation that was important, not the note, and not the commodity backing it.
> > many things would work exactly the same if people agreed to pretend that gold was moved from one vault to another instead of actually physically moving gold around.
> This is how commodity money works.
No, its how representative (or commodity-backed money) works, as distinct from commodity money.
> The dollar (as well as almost all paper currencies) originated as commodity money.
The dollar (whether you mean the US dollar or its Spanish predecessor) originated as commodity money -- actual silver coins -- true. But most paper currencies (including the -- later -- paper dollars) originated as representative, commodity-backed, money.
> The paper dollar was backed by and convertible to gold.
The original dollar was silver. The original paper dollar was ... a trickier question. If you count the 1861 demand notes as "paper dollars", then, as they were initially redeemable for gold (as the US had switched from a silver to a gold standard) money, they were convertible to (redeemable for) gold -- but they were not backed by gold (and redemption was soon suspended.)
If you mean the first legal tender paper dollars (U.S. Notes) issued soon after the 1861 demand notes, they were pure fiat currency, not backed by or convertible to anything.
Menger provides an evolutionary theory of money's emergence and does devote a chapter to the precious metals, but historically all sorts of commodities have served as media of exchange in various circumstances.
The primary standards of international trade during the mercantilist and merchant capitalist eras were silver bullion coins like the Spanish dollar.
Formal gold specie standards arose during the 19th century by royal fiat and soon displaced other currencies.
It is likely that free currencies would settle on precious metal convertibility because of prior art, but there's no reason to presume it has to be gold in particular, or to single out gold as being "special".
It doesn't have to be gold of course, but in absence of "royal fiat" as you put it... gold has uniquely superior natural properties to most other candidates (rare, fungible, can be divided into extremely small quantities without destroying it, does not tarnish, limited industrial use).
Silver has most of these qualities however it is second only to crude oil in its industrial usefulness (best conductor of heat, best conductor of electricity, shiniest metal when polished, antimicrobial/antibacterial, whatever you call its property that makes it suitable for photography, etc).
Of course you are correct about the use of spanish dollars... this was the origin of the US dollar, which was originally specified as certain quantity of silver in the Coinage Act of 1792. In colonial times it was not uncommon to cut a Spanish dollar into eighths (like a pizza pie) to make change... this is why even today we call $.25 "two bits" and why until a few years ago stock prices were quoted to 1/8 precision. Ironically most markets are electronic now and there are (coincidentally?) 8 "bits" to a byte to so maybe we never should have changed that at all ;)
> The primary standards of international trade during the mercantilist and merchant capitalist eras were silver bullion coins like the Spanish dollar.
Fine, but that doesn't answer jwallaceparker's point, which was that gold and silver had been used for money for thousands of years. And weren't ancient Greek coins electrum (gold/silver)?
> Formal gold specie standards arose during the 19th century by royal fiat and soon displaced other currencies.
Fine, but weren't gold and silver used as coin long before that (even if not by formal royal fiat)?
I don't deny any of that. My objection was to the GP's initial singling out of gold. I'm also skeptical of how constraining a commodity requirement is in light of modern financial institutions and public finance.
> I'm also skeptical of how constraining a commodity requirement is in light of modern financial institutions and public finance.
I also am skeptical of that. I think that, since 1975 or so when the value of gold was allowed to float, the Fed has kept the value of the dollar more stable than the value of gold (or silver). And "in light of modern financial institutions and public finance", it's pretty important to hold the value of the unit of account more or less constant...
Currencies can be redeemable. Until 1968 if you held US dollars you could take them to the treasury and trade them for silver coins (or bullion, post 1934). That gives you the benefits of precious metals without the hassle.
I don't follow your logic.
The non-aggression principle is what's at the core of libertarianism. It's to never initiate violence against peaceful people.
Helping others voluntarily is certainly in keeping with the philosophy.
> Libertarianism says, if you had bad luck and are poor and you get a disease you can't pay to cure, you die.
No it doesn't. It says we're going to help that person who is poor or in need, but we're doing it voluntarily.