🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@crowgirl And yet we still, knowing its use, only use gloves and a mask when dealing medically with a person (such as doing surgery)... why? because most of us would rather take the very real risk, knowing respirators are going to reduce it, because living our lives in hazmat out of fear, however real, is no life at all. I will take the risk if it means I can be comfortable and enjoy my day more.

Its like hyochondria with this stuff... like sure, if you never shake hands, wear a mask all the time, and wash your hands obsessively you will be at a marginally less risk.. but there comes a point where its just not worth the tradeoff.

@admitsWrongIfProven

Yes if you take a snapshot of the world at any moment the wealth in that moment is obviously fixed... how can anything change if time is fixed? The point? I dont think that was ever in dispute.

> I really wonder what you mean by "we can always grow more" in relation to gold. Have i been misinformed where gold comes from? Are you talking about waiting for supernovae to produce more heavy elements?

The amount of gold we have in circulation is not fixed... there will always be more in the earth to mine. As technology improves our ability to detect it or reach it improves too. For all intents and purposes it isnt finite given how vast the earth is and how little of it we have tapped.

The bigger issue with mining isnt if its finite or not, it has to do with the cost in environmental damage it takes to mine it. But even that too can be improved with technology (and has been).

> Saying these are infinite does not describe our world, it only says "we could do better", which i do not contest.

I am not saying they are infinite. I am saying they are effectively not finite given the vastness of the untapped resources still available to us in most cases. In other words, for the moment they are not behaving as finite resources, and wont be for a long time, at least from an economic perspective.

@SteelFolk i remember impatiently waiting just for the ascii art to render :)

Very interesting waterfall (spectrogram) of a dial up modem connecting. I can even picture where all the sounds come from I remember hearing as a child from the classic dialup connection.

#ComputerScience #CS #ComputerEngineering #STEM #Technology

@admitsWrongIfProven give me some time to respond, im workign on sysadmin stuff and context switching is a little rough at the moment.

@admitsWrongIfProven resources are not necceseraly finite, some are, some arent. Corn is not finite, you can grow more or less and can replace lost corn.

Even resources that are finite often act as non-finite resources. Like gold, there is a fixed amount in the world but in practice we can always grow more.

Land, that is a good example of a fairly fixed resource. I mean sure you can always find new islands or even make them from sand. But this is rare and hard to do so it is fairly fixed.

But when we talk about wealth fixed or mostly-fixed resources is only a small portion of that. But when a resource is fixed I do agree it needs to be handled differently than resources that are more easily generated.

@admitsWrongIfProven So we agree on that isolated point correct? Yes or no?

@admitsWrongIfProven Again we arent addressing (yet) who can create wealth or if wealth can be generated fairly by everyone equally.. thats a fair tangent we can go on in a minute... But we agree on the fundemental original point, wealth is not fixed and one does not need to take it from others, it can be generated (even if generating it may mean converting and having some wealth to start).

@admitsWrongIfProven Who said anything about equality? We are talking about one specific thing, not if everyone can equally generate wealth, not if its fair, not anything but if wealth is a zero sum game.. once you agree to that we can move on to other aspects and get deeper into fairnes.

@admitsWrongIfProven Ok so do we agree atleast on the first point.. wealth isnt a pie, for someone to be rich they dont have to deprive other of their wealth, they can make their own?

@admitsWrongIfProven you are all over the place man... one fact at a time... right now we are on the point that for one person to be wealthy (have a bunch of loafs) they dont need to take it from other peoples wealth (loafs), they can, and do, make more loafs without needing to take a loaf from anyone...

Once we establish and agree wealth is not a zero sum game and this is true we can go on to address other facts that may lead to unfairness ornpoverty... but one at a time or else you just muddy the water.

@admitsWrongIfProven also economic theory never claimed people cant starve... only that being wealthy doesnt mean i had to take it from someone else... they can be poor and starve all on their own without someone needing to take from them.

@admitsWrongIfProven the fact that land can be owned doesnt change the fact that i just demonstrated wealth (loafs) can be generated and isnt fixed... you just moved the goal post. Regardlesss to any otber objection you have i just showed how a oerson can become loaf rich without needing to take any loafs from the existing loafs being shared.

@admitsWrongIfProven except there arent a fixed 10 loafs.. some guy might go out and harvest some seeds and make 100 loafs and come and now is loaf rich, all without taking any loafs from anyone.

I'm just a fly on the wall.

@searls Can I please get a T-shirt with that printed on it please.