Additionally, this $90 deposit can then be treated as 'real' money and loaned out according to the same 10% reserve - $81. In the manner of a babushka doll, this can be deposited and loaned out ($72.90, $65.61, $59.05... etc.) until the amount becomes vanishingly small.
While this is a textbook example reserve requirements haven't been a significant constraint on bank monetary creation since the 80's. The Bretton Woods system put in place after WWII and Nixon closing the gold window in the 1970's made reserves a less unique.
The creation of non-bank demand deposits like money market funds put the nail in the coffin of using reserve requirements to manage the amount of money in the economy.
Today the biggest constraint to monetary creation is bank capital ratios. Under current rules banks have to have roughly 1 dollar if equity for every 12 dollars of loans and that can vary based on the type of loans the banks make.
It's difficult not to see to the word 'slumped' as an editorial judgement, and I find it quite strange. The world is grotesquely overpopulated and at some point it needs to stop.
Currently it takes 1.2 earths' worth of resources to support the earth's population, which means the earth cannot support all of us without starting to deplete resources. So yes, the planet IS overpopulated.
> Currently it takes 1.2 earths' worth of resources to support
LOL, this kind of "x amount of Earths" to support ourselves always make me laugh, because it assumes energy cannot be produced and that productivity gains do not exist. 30 years ago we were supposed to reach the "Peak petrol" point very soon, yet we found new ways to extract fossil fuels and push back that peak time to a much later time, leaving us time to develop alternative energies as well.
And we are still just literally scratching the Earth's surface. The Earth is a ball and most of its resources are far below the ground.
What is meant by that is that thebcurrent worldnpopulation exceeds Earth's carrying capacity by a factor of 0.2. That means that there are more people than the Earth can sustainably -- note the world sustainably. Once you overshoot the carrying capacity, you're in a situation where even the Earth's renewable resources are being depleted, in a way that may not recover for a very long time.
Resources on earth started depleting as soon as the planet was formed. Was the earth overpopulated before there was any life on it?
Resources are finite. They are finite no matter how many humans there are on the earth. You are referring to consumption which is a large problem, but also a fixable one (edit: to a certain point, of course). It is not overpopulation.
Petty much every documentary I have seen the last 5 years claims humans are increasingly ruining the planet at a non-sustainable rate. I expected this to be common knowledge by now.
If you prefer reading about it, Collapse by Jared Diamond[1] is an exceptional book on the subject, with facts and references for every claim and anecdote.
According to who? I don't see how that makes sense. Many resources are not renewable, so having an extra .2 Earth's worth of them would not make it more sustainable.
>Currently it takes 1.2 earths' worth of resources to support the earth's population
So the earth we are living on is in fact 1.2 earths, which is in fact 1.44 earths, which is in fact 1.728 earths, which is in fact 2.0736 earths, which is in fact at least two earths?
I would not understate the risks of overpopulation. BUT this "1.2 Earths" thing is singularly useless. It could be of no concern in some domains, and much worse in others. "1.2 Earths" says nothing useful.
You haven't travelled to India, China or Bangladesh have you ? The world is already heavily overpopulated. If we estimate the amount of people the world can support and that's higher than the current number, it does not mean we should have that higher number.
If we keep going higher, we will not be able to stop the destruction of flora and fauna that is currently underway. The world may be able to "support" more people, but it is unlikely to be a world worth living in.
> You haven't travelled to India, China or Bangladesh have you ?
I have traveled all over the place, so your lousy ad hominem is unnecessary. "Crowded" is not the same as "overpopulated."
> If we estimate the amount of people the world can support and that's higher than the current number, it does not mean we should have that higher number.
Ah, so now we've moved from a factual question ("Is the world overpopulated?") to a subjective one ("At what level below the carrying capacity should human population be maintained?") which comes with a number of ethical questions ("Who are we going to forcibly sterilize to maintain that level?" for one).
> If we keep going higher, we will not be able to stop the destruction of flora and fauna that is currently underway.
Undoubtedly. That is not the same thing as overpopulation, by the way, because we humans have been driving other species to extinction throughout our entire history.
> The world may be able to "support" more people, but it is unlikely to be a world worth living in.
This is nice and subjective, and also not the same thing as overpopulation. In the future, please try to avoid slinging around buzzwords.
> "Who are we going to forcibly sterilize to maintain that level?"
That's unnecessarily inflammatory. We could substantially reduce the birth rate by providing everyone with free birth control and promoting its usage. If that isn't sufficient we could pay money to anyone who has a vasectomy.
There are still ethical questions there, but it's a far cry from rounding up poor people and sterilizing them against their will.
> We could substantially reduce the birth rate by providing everyone with free birth control and promoting its usage.
The efforts to increase condom usage in sub-Saharan Africa show that this might not be very easy at all, and this assumes that the people who have children in those areas don't actually want to have children which probably isn't accurate.
> If that isn't sufficient we could pay money to anyone who has a vasectomy.
Economic coercion is still force, and still ethically shaky.
> The efforts to increase condom usage in sub-Saharan Africa show that this might not be very easy at all, and this assumes that the people who have children in those areas don't actually want to have children which probably isn't accurate.
It assumes that some of the people who have children in those areas don't actually want to have children, which probably is accurate.
Moreover, the efforts to increase condom usage are targeted at reducing AIDS and other STIs. If you want to reduce birth rates you promote birth control pills. Particularly in an area where the legal system puts most of the economic burden of raising children on the mother.
> Economic coercion is still force, and still ethically shaky.
I fail to see how offering to pay someone $5,000 to have a vasectomy is less economically coercive than requiring them to pay $10,000+/year in child support for the next two decades if they get a woman pregnant.
> You haven't travelled to India, China or Bangladesh have you ?
Have you travelled to the US, Europe, Russia or Africa? In most parts of these continents there's nothing but nature for kilometres and kilometres with very low population density. Only large cities concentrate a lot of people, and there's still space for more if we really wanted to.
From "Deforestation and net forest area change, 2010"
* Around 13 million hectares of forest were converted to other uses or lost through natural causes each year in the last decade compared to 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s.
* The net change in forest area in the period 2000–2010 is estimated at –5.2 million hectares per year (an area about the size of Costa Rica), down from –8.3 million hectares per year in the period 1990–2000.
I live in China, which is not nearly as populated as Bangladesh or India.
We have to decide if we are to move forward or back. Technology can help us boost population while limiting impact, we can also branch out into new ecological niches (even those off planet) as any successful animal would. Biologically speaking, we should increase in number if we are doing well, to do otherwise isn't very natural (and ya, flora and fauna are out competed all the time, it's part of the system).
It might not be the moral thing to do, but it is definitely the natural thing to do.
It takes a special kind of person to look at all the environmental damage we are currently doing to the world (destruction of rainforests, overfishing, rising sea levels, disappearance of coral reefs, desertification, air pollution, soil erosion), and say "more please!"
Nowhere in my post did I say "more please." To say humans should roll over and intentionally go extinct is not the solution just as much as exhausting all resources. Somehow, we will find how to thrive.
It's important to remember that up until 60 years ago they weren't in any way separate from one another, and up until 20-30 years ago when the south's economy took off, there was little material difference between how the two countries were run.
night and day difference. It makes me cringe when people try to group them up together. If they were indeed similar and identical they should've produced the same result but it hasn't, one is a failed state and will forever be noted as an embarrassment to human race, the other a thriving developed country.
North Korea even had a head start by a far margin. Up until 1970s, North Korea was pretty much the better equipped, better fed, and stronger military force.
South Korea would not have survived had it not had military dictatorship guarding against North Korean aggression both externally and internally (lot of bitter South Koreans wanting communism).
He says Google got 100x their investment since it's 'worth' that multiple of what they paid. I don't think it's a valid argument since they paid real cash and have only a notional value in return. It's hard to see anyone forking over $100bn+ for youtube, and I doubt it's even made enough profit since they bought it to cover what they paid originally paid.
None of this is to particularly criticise either the original post or its followup - it takes courage to call it as you see it and then own up to your mistakes, but it's always worth taking another pass at the figures to see if they really stack up.
Guarantee everyone in this comment thread saw that episode of the West Wing where CJ meets the cartographers for social cartography. Me too. Big block of cheese, indeed...
It reminds me of the astounding naivete of Aaron Swartz's girlfriend (or whatever she was at the time) in talking to the FBI and then being surprised that they were just looking for shit to pile on him and nothing else.
Not everybody subscribes to the super cynical worldview, you'd be surprised how many people live their whole lives in exactly that state of naivety. We're all brought up with platitudes like 'the police is your best friend' and 'we live in a state with fair justice'. Given that it's no wonder that people will actually try to cooperate with police expecting justice to be done. You're essentially blaming the victim here.
Your definition of 'common sense' is not all that common, that's the problem here. Whole generations would essentially agree with the statement that 'the police is here to help you'.
It's the police that is in the wrong here, not those that believe in slogans such as 'protect and serve'. That's how I was brought up and the way my parents viewed 'the law'. Quite a few people of that generation are still around and are still instilling their values into others regardless of how misguided that is in light of the developments since they grew up.
In my country there is very little crime, and the police very much only exist to serve the population and they are always trying to help.
Common sense here is that it would be foolish to think that the police are not trying to help, and I am very glad that the US's relation with the police is not an entirely global problem.
The cultural aspect is the view of the police, and not the terrible things they are up to. You and your countrymen are simply as naive as Arron Schwartz's girlfriend.
yea, I learned too late in life, and I still am caught off guard. Times have changed, and I don't trust government, nor law enforcement. But, then again I can honestly state as I got older there's only a few people I trust.
This meme bugs me because it is possible to heed the advice while still speaking to the police. I find that the only people who parrot it are those who have never been on the other end of the table. I've seen random people run over and advise a witness to "not talk to the police" while they were describing what happened to an officer at the scene of an accident. You can't package deeper context with something simple like "don't talk to the cops" and expect people to understand it. I think this general advice does more harm than good because of the way it's delivered.
The correct conclusion to come away with from the advice is to be vigilant when interacting with those who have the power to prosecute you, and often that means invoking your right to remain silent -- but not always. You should also know when you need a lawyer -- again, not always. If the cops knock on your door because they're looking for a lost kid, calm down and get over yourself, they're not looking for you.
Sadly, you and me get that, but others take the advice to the extreme and I've seen both of my examples firsthand.
As a guy that had his name run for bench warrants while being a witness to a traffic accident, you can speak for yourself. In some cases nothing good comes about speaking to police, especially in minority/poor communities.
As a guy who spent four months in county pretrial detention on three felonies and a misdemeanor and no bail, I do speak for myself. I didn't speak to the police and lawyered up and I spent 119 days in jail. The next time, the FBI came; this time, I was suspicious but not actually involved, and I carefully spoke to the FBI without a lawyer and remained a free man. It's almost as if there's more to it than the Fifth Amendment.
And yeah, if you're riding a warrant, you probably shouldn't give your name to a law enforcement officer. That's called being stupid, and if you think it's shady to have your name run when a peace officer interacts with you and knows your name, you have some case law to read. That's their job. Witness details go in the same exact system.
I get the gist of the advice but I'm tired of seeing knobs on YouTube with their phone out recording an officer while shouting "I invoke my rights!" over and over again, and I think part of it is the way this advice is interpreted.
The key is to be polite but assertive. If you yell from behind your door "Hell no PIG! You're never coming inside and it is my RIGHT to say no!!" then it may arouse suspicion. If instead you say " I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting company and my place is a mess. Lets talk outside instead." they will likely not think twice about it. If you treat a cop like the human they are they will probably be more trusting. Funny how that works...
That's exactly right. When the above piece of advice was told to me, the suggested phrasing was something like "If you don't mind, I'd rather discuss this out here with you," and as you say this, pull the door closed behind you.
