[ExI] it was the best times, it was the best of times

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 11:29:36AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:

> Even the government isn't wasteful enough to collect data on something this

Your dogma is showing. This is going to make you miss some solutions.

> useless. If there is less waste, then that is a GOOD THING. Conservation is

Less waste is a good thing, but I'm using it instrumentally here, as a metric.

> always the lowest hanging fruit. I didn't even laugh so much when Obama
> said "Inflate your tires" though he got dumped on for saying so. Dumpster
> diving may be a way of life for a fringe, but that's not what I'm talking
> about when I talk about stuff being free in great amounts these days.

I realize what you're talking about. I'm talking about something else.
 
> But even products can be free to the users. For example, Google paid for
> hard drives that store my email. Yes, they made up for it with advertising,

Google is not selling cloud services. Google is selling their users.
You're not the customer, you're the product.

> which I read. But the hard drive space is "free" to me in terms of actual
> cash. I do pay for it with a minimal amount of time.

You're having only a tiny idea of what you're paying for it.
 
> Should be enough time to develop space based copper mining... don't you
> think?

What, about 30 years? No way in hell. Go talk to rocket people to
realize how much you don't know. 
 
> But some monkeys are more clever than others. Fortunately, we still have

Their cleverness does not translate into moving all the other monkeys
from their furry butts.

> money enough that some of the clever monkeys can amass the fortunes
> necessary to do this (Elan Musk, Paul Alan anyone?) despite the government

I'm happy that these guys exist. I'm unhappy that the bulk of capital
amassment is unproductive. I'm unhappy that much of wealth-building lies
in our past.

> attempting to take most of it away to keep the non-functional monkeys
> breathing and voting for the socialist agenda.
> 
> If we take all of Musk's money away from him and those like him, then
> perhaps we will not be mining asteroids in the end and we can all eat
> terrestrial rocks with Eugen.

I'm getting tired of arguing with a caricature. Please try to be more
amusing in future.