World’s richest woman would prefer to pay her miners $2 a day

[Aeson]

Yes, when you expanded on your thoughts, it sounded more like real GDP (or real consumption, really).

I would say you're getting closer. But not just consumption. What the workers do with the increased wages is likely to be largely consumption ... but even in my very limited experience here I've seen it spark entrepreneurial enterprises and investment use of the increased income as well.

[Jaguar]

If you want to address my statements about "real GDP" (or whatever else you want to label it as as you run away from addressing it) as "aggregate demand", that's on you for applying the wrong label.

The theories about velocity of money, and how money "travels" are made-up. You're right that the benefits of open borders would be enormous. You struggle with terminology, particularly, for example, "productivity" and "demand." You would probably benefit a lot from taking a real economics course (and I mean that sincerely).

[molly bloom]

However, I just want to take a brief time-out to discuss your "knowledge" of irrelevant details. No, Kuciwalker isn't fluent in Xhosa .

Oh my. I was so sure he would be. Along with Swahili, Ga and Bini.

People have long-accused you of just googling obscure things to sound smart, and I've stayed quiet about it for a while now, but this is a particularly egregious example,

Oh dear- how wrong you are!

I didn't use Google even just a teeny tiny bit in that post. I just used my naturally developed sense of sarcasm, directed at someone whose knowledge of 20th Century African history and current African history could be written on the back of a postage stamp with a large marker pen and still leave room for the text of Albie Sachs' 'Jail Diary' translated into Fula.

You just chose a name that sounded exotic and was spelled with an amusing consonant pairing

Amazingly inaccurate long distance telepathy. But do continue. I'm familiar with fraudulent American psychics- I enjoy the work of James Randi for instance.

You didn't choose something relevant at all, which suggests your "knowledge" is precisely the sort of superficial name-dropping people always accuse you of.

Oh boo hoo, now I'm all sad and all.

[Aeson]

The theories about velocity of money, and how money "travels" are made-up.

I'm a market maker, not a sheep

Any money in circulation right now is probably at most a few stops, and a few days, from making it's way to the top of the ladder. (Passing through the hands of someone with more wealth than 99% of humanity. Near enough the "top" for me.) This applies to all money in circulation. Relatively very little of it is within the grasp of the collective group of people living in grass huts worldwide, even though they'll make up more than 1%. They have no product or service to offer in exchange for it. The money doesn't go there. It's very simple.

A dollar found on a beach by some kid ... who is more likely to have this dollar go through their hands in the next day, month, or year? One of the 1% at the top of the ladder, or one of the ~50% on the lowest rungs? It's not even close.

Hand those people on the lowest runs $1 though, and it'll be spent about as soon as it hit's their palm. Then it's just a hop, skip, and a jump from the top of the ladder. There's a shopkeeper who's marginally better off than those living in grass huts, and he sells cheap braided nylon rope that would come in really handy for tying up a goat or pig. This rope is dropped off on a truck which is owned by a large corporation. The manufacturer is also a large corporation. The money is back to the top within days.

Sometimes there will be small scale local economic activity that can keep the money in circulation for longer. But then you're mostly talking about people higher up the ladder with the money passing through their hands anyways.

Hand me $1 and it'll sit in my pack for a few days probably. I don't have a pressing need for it. Maybe since I have a bit more money I'll spend a bit more next week at market. Or more likely I'll save it for the next little emergency that turns up. I don't turn it over as fast as someone who really is in need of what it can do.

Hand someone really wealthy $1 and it will likely have next to 0 impact on their spending because it's such an insignificant amount of money.

The poor will make better use of the money. They'll use it faster, it means more to them, and it will be back in the hands of those at the top very shortly. They don't have anywhere near as much of a chance to get it back as the people at the top do of seeing it.

You're right that the benefits of open borders would be enormous.

The main thrust of my argument is we don't necessarily even have to wait for politicians to get rid of stupid immigration laws to see much of the potential benefits. We don't have to actually move someone across a line to give them an opportunity to be more productive. The benefits of having workers in more productive jobs (nominally) can be had anywhere in the world, and at least in some cases to better effect than if we imported them to the US to do the same work for the same pay.

You struggle with terminology, particularly, for example, "productivity" and "demand." You would probably benefit a lot from taking a real economics course (and I mean that sincerely).

If at some point in our conversation you are confused about what I am talking about, try an honest question next time. If you think I am addressing the concepts I am actually talking about in a way that is incorrect, feel free to argue with me about the specifics of that disagreement ...

Taking a course would just be a waste of some money that would be better spent here towards starting up or expanding the business(es). Whatever my thoughts on broader economics is at this point has roughly 0 impact on the world, only marginal effect even on the forums (which is soley for blowing off mental energy), and that's very unlikely to change in the near future.

[molly bloom]

ICE BURN

Jaguar,you've made my week. Yesterday I seriously injured my leg but it's all okay now, I don't mind, because you made my week.

Does anyone else remember the Guyanese literature thing?

You should- it showed how you shouldn't rely on your ignorance of the world outside your country as a basis for making assumptions about the knowledge of other people.

I had probably seen the film of 'To Sir, With Love' before you were even born.

Several weeks prior to your post, I'd just been discussing how a health food shop near where I lived used to sell particularly good dhal rotis with mango chutney- Guyanese style.

And I'd been discussing it with a very pleasant Guyanese woman who was in the African run charity where I volunteer.

Every week.

I also have an old Four Square paperback edition of E.R. Braithwaite's book- and I bought a first edition of his second book as a gift for someone many years ago. I must say, I am somewhat dismayed that you're unfamiliar with his work- do you read any other writers from the Caribbean ?

I can recommend some to you- authors writing in English that is.

If you bothered to check the date of your typically snarky little post about 19th Century Guyanese literature with the date of say, the music video of Lulu singing 'To Sir With Love' which I posted in the Music Thread, you'll see it handily pre-dates yours.

Didn't need to use Google- just relied on my knowing more than you do.

[molly bloom]

And I'm sure there's a handful of Mormons mining coal in West Virginia, too.

I hadn't realized Mormon was a language or dialect. If you'd asked me politely, I could have directed you to particular information about the politico-economic policies of U.D.I. Rhodesia and apartheid era South Africa, and to an extent, the Portuguese colonial regimes in Angola and Mozambique.

Rhodesia and South Africa, particularly in the mid to late Sixties, deliberately restricted the owneship of land by black Africans in order to create a landless unskilled workforce which had to migrate to the cities (and to heavy industry, like the mines) in order to find the means to live- even at a basic level.

As you claim to be interested in geography, I direct you to an excellent little book, which you can bet your last nickel that H.C. and his sunshine band of apartheid apologists have never read- it's called 'The Goegraphy of African Affairs' by Paul Fordham, mine's the revised edition- quite old, well-thumbed and read.


Admittedly it's dealing with the just post-colonial era of African nationhood in the main (except for the Portuguese colonies) but it's chock-full of useful facts and details.

As is 'Southern Africa- The New Politics of Revolution' by Davidson, Slovo and Wilkinson, and Basil Davidson's 'Africa In History'.

None of them Googled, all of them owned, studied and read. By me.

Along with, for instance, (the aforementioned) 'Jail Diary of Albie Sachs'- perhaps H.C. and reggiemediocre could Google him ? Might be quicker for them.

And Ruth First's '117 Days'.

The real reason I used Xhosa in that post ? I'd been listening to a compilation c.d. from the South African radio archives and Xhosa just leaped out at me kinda sorta.

That also accounts for the gum boot dancing remark.


I do hope this post has proved useful to you.

[molly bloom]

It's obvious that molly bloom googled some out-of-context, irrelevant stuff in order to pretend to be smarter than Kuciwalker, and it backfired miserably. You and gribbler are ridiculous for pretending that molly bloom did anything different.

They sure am, boss !

[molly bloom]

"Meaningless" would be this post. You try to make yourself seem smart with cryptic twitter-length posts that reveal nothing whatsoever except your lack of understanding of the subject at hand. Much like Molly, only more concise.

Your posts on history should be more concise- particularly those on African history and the history of trades unions. They could be like Collins Notes, only wrong- you could call them Dork Notes, as a possibility.

[molly bloom]

But he didn't. He wanted us all to be impressed with his in-depth knowledge of Africa, but instead he exposed himself as superficial and ignorant.

Yeah! Tell it like it is baby !

Please stop misinforming people about geography just to defend molly bloom's pretentious overreach.

And far off I hear k.d. lang singing 'Crying over you.....' I'm so wounded, I could just die.

[molly bloom]

Not quite that. "Zulu" is actually very exotic-sounding. It's just not obscure enough. Zulus are a well-known people in the west. He chose an obscure language, much like people pretend to like obscure rock bands, so that people would think he was smart.

Oh, you're so accurate. I couldn't say, have read about the Xhosa people or culture anywhere,or even met some, could I ? Not in London. Or Manchester. Or anywhere in the U.K.

[molly bloom]

If you and the rest of the Apolyton left would stop concocting feeble defenses to defend one of your own, we could move on. molly bloom pretended to argue from authority, and instead showed his ignorance. Deal with it.

Yes, that's absolutely it. Well done, Sherlock Holmes.

[QUOTE] [The point is that molly makes ridiculous attempts to appear to be a Well-Educated and Intelligent Man by name-dropping obscure and irrelevant details that nobody cares about, generally from the first 10 results on google. In this case it's made especially apparent by the fact that he got the irrelevant details he so loves wrong./QUOTE]

You know, reggie decidedly below average, if you'd Googled about Zimbabwean history before going off on your stupid, misinformed rant about Mugabe, you might have, just by chance, come up with some accurate worthwhile information.

Instead you and H.C. just act like cheerleaders for two appalling racist regimes based on nothing more than that some companies made big profits at some point in history and that a racist minority (a small minority in Rhodesia) were wealthy.

Perhaps you're just nostalgic for the Eisenhower era back home when those kind of folks knew their place and the U.S. had similar laws in place.

[molly bloom]

Let's disagree here.

Molly wanted to point out other aspects of human behavior, like culture, society and politics, that are necessary to understand "choice". He gave color to his argument by googling for specifics.

Right in the first part, wrong in the second.

[QUOTE] I don't think he Googles, I think he genuinely has a wide knowledge of multicultural trivia./QUOTE]

Correct up to a point. The point being that the sarcasm was directed at someone routinely mocked by others for his cosseted privileged background- and if I recall in the past he'd shown some amusingly ignorant and misinformed views about recent African history- and I was just revelling in the irony.

[Hauldren Collider]

Yeah! Tell it like it is baby !



And far off I hear k.d. lang singing 'Crying over you.....' I'm so wounded, I could just die.

Considering you posted NINE not particularly plausible responses to our trashing of you, I'd say yes, you are fairly wounded and butthurt. You're not fooling anyone

[Hauldren Collider]

And you know what? Even IF molly bloom knows all these things without google, he's still a ****ing moron, because name-dropping random obscure cultural references is not actually intelligence. It's trivia. You might win at Jeopardy! but you'll never win at life. Or, for that matter, any sort of actual intellectual discussion. Maybe your friends at parties think it's impressive, I see it for what it is--a lame attempt to puff up your remarkably feeble debate abilities.

I've only ever seen Molly do two things:
1. Name-drop obscure cultural references as a not-quite rebuttal of someone
2. Give a weak ad-hominem with archaic English language (what some on this side of the pond would call "SAT words")

[Kuciwalker]

And you know what? Even IF molly bloom knows all these things without google, he's still a ****ing moron, because name-dropping random obscure cultural references is not actually intelligence. It's trivia.

The damning bit is that the supposed benefit of knowing all these things is to provide context for new data - and yet the very first time we saw molly apply that, he got the context wrong with the whole Xhosa/miners thing.