All of demarquis's Comments + Replies

The way a government normally services it's debts is to create new money,  and use that to pay off the debts. However, the principle way that government creates new money these days isn't to print it, it's to lower the interest rate so that private banks will borrow more money from it. This represents a credit, that then balances the debts the government owes (typically from selling bonds). Raise the interest rates, and banks will borrow less money from the government, tilting the balance toward debt. There is, however, another way to reduce debt, which is to sell fewer bonds. 

One problem with monetary policy is that new money (lowered rates) isn't distributed evenly across the population of consumers. It's a little like a Pachinko machine, where you drop the ball in the top and hope it ends up in a particular bucket. It only works if people spend their savings, and right now, that hasn't been happening. In theory, their bank should be spending it for them, in the form of business to business loans, but corporate lending has been somewhat disconnected from GDP growth for some time now, if you exclude security speculation from GD... (read more)

The extent to which you can benefit from asking what someone is tracking in their head, and the degree to which they can usefully explain it to you, will depend critically on how much information, basic to the topic at hand, you two of you already share.

You can learn more from a master, using this technique, the more you already knew.

If “cognitive capacity” is the amount of information useful to some specific domain of problem solving one has in one’s head, then everyone on Earth has more or less the same cognitive capacity (excepting only people with some... (read more)

I am a former (now retired) management consultant and human resources trainer and manager. When I was professionally active, I specialized in non-profit and government clients. I recognize nearly everything that X said about non-profit governing boards, with the caveat that what he describes is typical for larger and more complex organizations (https://www.academia.edu/download/42331960/Nonprofit_Boards_Size_Performance_and_Ma20160207-32480-1x3h68o.pdf). There are very few good primers on non-profit governance (https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/cgi/viewconte... (read more)

For my part, I think Dumbledore could have made a more compelling argument. One can easily claim that one should fear death, and that in fact everyone alive already does, whatever their belief system says. But saying that is like saying one should wash one's hands before eating, until someone washes their hands until they bleed. Or that protecting people against harm is a good thing, until someone enslaves everyone against their will in order to better protect them...

Dark wizards do not merely fear death, or simply desire immortality, like we all do. They ... (read more)

Neither have I, but I would have understood immediately, while still lying on the floor. In fact, I would have anticipated it. I think it's a matter of how cynical you are, which is sometimes a function of how often you were disappointed in people as a child or teenager.