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I don't buy it. We have many existing laws and spending programs that make us worse off than not having them (or, equivalently, leaving it up to the market rather than the taxpayers to provide them). The free market is known to work well enough, and broadly enough, that demanding "What would you replace it with?" when someone proposes ending one of those laws or programs is un-called-for. (If anyone really does doubt that the market will do better, the thing to do is to try it and see, not to demand proof that can't exist because the change in question hasn't been tried recently.) After a few repetitions, I simply lump the asker in with the kind of troll whose reply to every comment is "Cite?" and add him to my spam filter.
An explicit argument that lack of regulation would produce better results than the current regulatory system is not the same thing as disliking and actively opposing the current system yet having no idea what to replace it with.
As far as literal charts of literal bodies of water on the surface of the earth, satelite photography actually has pretty much solved that problem.
Ahem. Do you really think that a picture of water surface which looks pretty much the same anywhere is equivalent to a nautical chart?
Proper nautical charts are very information-dense (take a look) and some of the more important bits refer to things underwater.
I'm fully aware that there's more to nautical charts than the water's surface, and I used the term 'satellite photography' somewhat broadly. More of the deep ocean has been mapped by sensors in polar orbits, which can stay on-station indefinitely and cover the entire globe without regard for local obstacles, than ever was (or likely would have been) by surface craft and submarines.
Supply is defined as that which is produced by human beings, not that which is made of physical matter. Otherwise, saying that demand only responds to changes in supply would fail to constrain our expectations any more than the laws of physics do. But we're pursuing a different level of analysis when we engage economic questions.
You are looking at aspects of my example that are irrelevant to my argument. My point is that human decisions and innovations are not the only factors behind changes in demand. Whether or not we restrict our analysis to the ice cream market alone, the point stands that demand would be changed if the Sun's behavior changed and thus we need to look at things other than changes to supply if we want to accurately predict changes in demand.
Henry George was looking at the labor market, and pointing out that you can't really understand the causes of large-scale unemployment, "the paralysis which produces dullness in all trades," without looking all the way back up the supply chain, if necessary to natural resources and how they're being used or prevented from use, until you find something necessary that's not being supplied. Can you find a counterexample to THAT claim, a cause for general unemployment which can't be traced back to a lack of supply?
Think it's false, both literally and figuratively. Moreover, the guy needs to get out of his cubicle and go to interesting places :-)
As far as literal charts of literal bodies of water on the surface of the earth, satelite photography actually has pretty much solved that problem.
As far as metaphorical waters, human civilization is larger than most people really think, and consists disproportionately of people finding and publishing answers to interesting questions. "Don't assume the waters are uncharted until you've done at least a cursory search for the charts" is sound advice.
No. AI isn't a gun; it's a bomb. If you don't know what you're doing, or even just make a mistake, you blow yourself up. But if it works, you lob it out the door and completly solve your problem.
A poorly put together gun is perfectly capable of crippling the wielder, and most bombs light enough to throw won't reliably kill everyone in a room, especially a large room. Also, guns are harder to get right than bombs. That's why, in military history, hand grenades and land mines came first, then muskets, then rifles, instead of just better and better grenades. That's why the saying is "every Marine is a rifleman" and not "every Marine is a grenadier."
A well-made Friendly AI would translate human knowledge and intent into precise, mechanical solutions to problems. You just look through the scope and decide when to pull the trigger, then it handles the details of implementation.
Also, you seem to have lost track of the positional aspect of the metaphor. The room outside represents the future; are you planning to stay behind in the garbage compactor?
Okay, thought things through.
Not every change in material resources is a change in supply. For example, the rate at which the Sun burns energy is not controlled by humans, nor was it even known to us in the past. However, the Sun's energy can effect demand nonetheless - for example, ice cream might become more popular if the sun heats up.. Thus the sun is a counterexample to the claim that changes in demand are all the result of changes in supply.
You might claim that the change in (quantity of) ice cream demanded is actually the consequence of increased ice cream production. That is true in the sense that if no more ice cream was produced then no more ice cream would be purchased. But we can also ask what caused the company to choose to increase production, and the clear answer is that the company thought the demand for ice cream would increase as a consequence of the heat wave. If there was no anticipation of increased demand due to external reasons, the ice cream company would not increase production and thus would miss out on potential profit.
Just to make completely sure I understand you here... you went looking for something that's not a natural resource underlying major economic issues, but could still affect those issues, and the best answer you could come up with was the sun ? The local star, that gigantic nuclear furnace whose radiant energy is the source of power for all photosynthetic life on earth, excepting maybe some geothermal-powered grow-lights in Greenland or something. That sun, that's the one you're referring to?
If solar energy flux abruptly changed by even one percent, up or down, or was widely anticipated to do so, i don't think unemployed ice cream manufacturers and salespeople would be the main economic consequence, or even noticeable among all the other chaos.
If you wake up, humans haven't been wiped out.
There might be an 'extinct in the wild, building up a viable breeding population in captivity' situation, though.
Given adequate time and resources
That's the iffy part.
So start with a quick sweep for functional-looking knives, followed by pieces of armor that look like they'd cover your skull or torso without falling off. No point to armor if it fails to protect you, or hampers your movements enough that you'll be taking more hits from lost capacity to dodge than the armor can soak up.
If the walls don't seem to have closed in much by the time you've got all that located and equipped, think about the junk you've already searched through. Optimistically, you may by this time have located several instances of the same model of gun with only one core problem each, in which case grab all of them and swap parts around (being careful not to drop otherwise good parts into the mud) until you've got at least one functional gun. Or, you may not have found anything that looks remotely like it could be converted into a useful approximation of a gun in the time available, in which case forget it and gather up whatever else you think could justify the effort of carrying it on your back.
Extending the metaphor, load-bearing gear is anything that lets you carry more of everything else with less discomfort. By it's very nature, that kind of thing needs to be fitted individually for best results, so don't just settle for a backpack or 'supportive community' that looks nice at arm's length but aggravates your spine when you actually try it on, especially if it isn't adjustable. If you've only found one or two useful items anyway, don't even bother.
Medical supplies would be investments in maintaining your literal health as well as non-crisis-averting skills and resources, so you're less likely to burn yourself out if one of those problems gets a grazing hit in. You should be especially careful to make sure that medical supplies you're picking out of the garbage aren't contaminated somehow.
Finally, a grenade would be any sort of clever political stratagem which could avert a range of related bad ends without much further work on your part, or else blow up in your face.
Yes. And then I would go see a psychologist. Because I find it more likely that I'm losing my grip on my own sanity than that I've just witnessed time travel.
Alright, so you bring this alleged time traveler with you to visit two or three different psychologists, all of whom are appropriately surprised by the whole 'time travel' thing but agree that you seem to be perceiving and processing the facts of the situation accurately.
Furthermore you have a lot of expensive tests run on the health and functionality of your brain, and all of the results turn out within normal limits. Camera-phone videos of the initial arrival are posted to the internet and after millions of views nobody can credibly figure out how it could have been faked. To the extent that introspection provides any meaningful data, you feel fine. In short, by every available test, your sanity is either far beyond retrieval down an indistinguishably perfect fantasy hole, or completely unmarred apart from perhaps a circumstantially-normal level of existential anxiety.
Now what?
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Really? Perhaps I should reread at least some of Atlas Shrugged from that angle, but I don't see how wanting to run a railroad competently can be read as villianous.
Pretend to be a radical environmentalist or something.