rkbabang

Of course. We do what we need to do at each stage in our development. Technology is all about bootstrapping from one level to another. Hydrocarbons are dirty, but burning them is certainly better than hunting whales for their blubber and having city streets covered in horse dung.

The article is poorly titled. By "oil" I think he means "hydrocarbons". Its an excellent article otherwise. I don't believe we ever have to worry about running out of hydrocarbons, by the time we do we will either be able to get as much as we want from space or, more likely, we will be using some other form of energy. I predict that by the end of this century the problem all the doomsayers will have their panties in a bunch about will be all the co2 we are pulling out of the atmosphere to build things out of carbon nanotubes, graphene, or eventually even diamond, with our nanotechnologies. Some time in the next 85 years the demagogues will switch from too much co2 causing global warming to too little co2 bringing about "the next ice age". Either way we'll be told it requires more government regulations and control, but of course if scientist really believe the planet is in danger work will be done to counter it. As I said I'm not worried about global warming only because I know that we will soon have the opposite problem. Some related links: "The quantity of hydrocarbons in asteroids in the inner solar system exceeds all of the known petroleum and coal sources on Earth." New discovery may allow scientists to make fuel from CO2 in the atmosphere

Excellent and thought provoking article. The next 4-5 decades should prove to be quite interesting as power shifts around. Thanks.

Actually the 20th century wasn't bloody only because of war, more than 6 times more people were murdered in the 20th century outside of both internal and foreign wars by their own governments. See: 20th century democide. This is the type of thing that Sanjeev was referring to that would be hard for any country to get away with today and it was far and away the most deadly plague of the 20th century.

That is certainly the worst case scenario. We'd likely never even know it wasn't natural. A nuke in a city would be more localized, but would be devastating as well. I don't think the US has quite come to terms with the reality of 4th generation warfare yet. In other words I don't think the US knows what it is messing with. I have some hope that the anti-war sentiment in the US will start growing again especially with the younger generation, but because the consequences I mentioned earlier sometimes span generations, the damage could already have been done.

Have you looked at what's on TV? Divorce rates? Single and unwed parents? Acceptable drug use? A book that talks a bit about the change in culture is "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking." She goes in some depth about how, at one time, we were a culture of character (Buffett's generation and prior). Doing the "right" thing was championed. Now, we are more of a culture of personality (people like Kim Kardashian). Where we value what gets are attention compared to what's intrinsically motivating. No doubt the world is changing, as it always has. I think we are in pretty good shape if the biggest moral issues you point out are TV shows, Divorce rates, and Drug use. Think about the mass atrocities that have occurred in the past. No doubt they still occur today but I think a lot more is being done to prevent them. Maybe I'm a cynic, but I'm willing to bet that we ain't seen nothing yet with mass atrocities. :P You sure? 12M Russians killed during World War I...Hiroshima...Nagasaki? We've seen some pretty big atrocities. Today, with the internet, drones, tracking devices, etc, there is nowhere to hide for the culprits. Look at Osama...10 years later, they nail him in a house in Pakistan, or the various dictators around the world that have been removed in the last two years through uprisings spread online. Even imagine what would happen if North Korea did something stupid today? Forget the Americans jumping all over them, the Chinese and Russians would be on them too. There is potential for great atrocities to happen, but awareness happens quicker and response time is reduced significantly as well. Cheers! Yeah, Sanj, I totally think we'll see something worse than the "worse case" scenario. It might be nuclear or biological. Even Buffett and Gates (I believe) have talked about that risk. As the world gets more populated, mass casualties would happen more and more easily. Technology, while awesome a lot of the time, also makes killing a whole lot more effective. http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-02-27/wall_street/31103069_1_luckiest-person-chemical-attack-cnbc I'm closer to Sanjeev's optimism than your pessimism, but I have to admit something like this is at least possible. And unfortunately every single time Obama's drones kills another person, it becomes just slightly more possible. People like to pretend that it isn't happening, or that it doesn't effect them, or it's Obama so it's OK. But killing people has consequences. I'll repeat that, because so many people do not understand it. Killing people has consequences.

Without reading the article, there is the phenomena called spooky action at a distance. Linked particles appear to "communicate" at faster than the speed of light in a mirror image fashion at the time the "spin" of one of the particles is measured. However, information outside of that closed system can't be communicated faster than the limit of light speed. Quantum entanglement might have applications for faster than light communications and teleportation of matter, but that isn't what is being talked about in a warp drive. In a warp drive you basically just warp space-time. You compress it in front of you and expand it behind you. You can think of it as the ship not moving at all, just space-time compressing at one spot, expanding in another, and the ship ending up at a different location at the end. So you don't travel faster than light, you stay still while space-time changes its shape around you.

No joke, he is serious. He isn't the only one who now thinks warp drives are possible. Even Elon Musk mentioned warp drives as something in his sights for SpaceX long term. Checkout the chapter starting on page 90 of this paper. The thing about technology is that while most people will overestimate the short term progress they vastly underestimate the medium-long term progress.

Martian, Thank you for posting that. It is so simple, yet so little understood. There are only two ways humans can interact with one another. By force or by trade. How much human misery would be avoided if people simply stopped demonizing trade and leaving the world to its alternative. BTW, I just re-read that this past January, the first time since I was a teenager (over 20 years ago). She has one glaring blind spot, a huge contradiction in a book which says over and over again that contradictions don't exist (her insistence that the existence of government is a necessity), but there is so much right in what she writes.

I think it depends on what you mean by "morality". That is somewhat relative and up for debate. If you mean not stealing, killing, assaulting others and dealing with each other peacefully rather than violently, then we are a more moral society than we've ever been. If you mean staying in a relationship where you are unhappy, because someone thinks divorce is "immoral" then, well, yes, by your particular definition of "morality" we are less "moral" then we used to be.

Premfan, I couldn't possibly disagree more with everything you've just said. The reason our lives are not that of hunters and gatherers is because we want, (and more importantly our ancestors wanted) more. The day everyone decides that their situation is good enough is the day we stagnate and progress no more. I've never bought into the nonsensical theory that "money can't buy happiness". That's just crap. Everyone wants more and that is what makes us human. You Can Never Have Too Much Money, New Research Shows

I would agree with that. The mixed systems we have today could be described as a mix of corporatism, socialism, mercantilism,and even fascism. I'm a supporter of free markets, but if you want to use the term capitalism for what we currently have, then I'm against it 100%.

I have all my accounts with Fidelity now, unlike a few years ago, they now charge $7.95/trade even for small accounts.

I've had UTMA accounts setup for my kids for years. Instead of retyping everything I'll just link to this discussion here from 2009 where I wrote about how I set them up. I've been actively managing their accounts for them and they each have over $6K in them now. My kids are now 13 & 12 yrs old. Yes, being a UTMA account means the money will be theirs on their 18th birthday to do with as they please. This isn't a college fund, it is their money, from birthdays, Christmases, doing jobs/chores, and anything else they can scrape up. We have a large property with animals(chickens, goats, rabbits, and a dog), they do earn their allowances. Re: How Do You Teach Your Family About Finance or Business?

I always buy before the bottom and need to watch it drop like a rock, then I always sell too soon and need to watch the price of what I no longer own skyrocket. If that was really the secret, I should be a billionaire by now. If you will read Baron Rothschild's statement carefully, you may discover that your buying strategy is the opposite of his. The fact that he never bought at the bottom means that he never bought on the way down. Had he done so, occasionally he would have bought at the bottom when such a purchase coincidentally could have been at what after the fact proved to be the bottom. Therefore, Rothschild certainly avoided falling knives and only bought after a substantial decline had stabilized and a stock had risen off the bottom. :) So rather buying something that is sufficiently undervalued as to have a reasonable margin of safety (even if it doesn't turn out to be the bottom), I should learn to time the market better? :) All kidding aside, I get your point. I tend to buy on the way down rather than on the way up and that is probably a mistake.

I always buy before the bottom and need to watch it drop like a rock, then I always sell too soon and need to watch the price of what I no longer own skyrocket. If that was really the secret, I should be a billionaire by now.

Wow, I didn't realize they weren't in the Hall of Fame already. That's ridiculous.

unbundled. I have Comcast again, but for years I had direct TV and used Comcast for internet. At the time Comcast's high speed internet was something like $60/mo, but it was $40/mo if you were a cable subscriber. So I subscribed to the smallest cable package they had, which was basically the local channels only for $8/month. So I got the Internet and local channels(which I didn't need or use) for $48/month rather than $60/month for internet only. You may want to look at your options to see if you can save some money. The only reason I have pay TV at all is because of my wife. I never watch TV other than a Netflix movie once in a while. I'd be perfectly happy without a TV at all. I hate paying Comcast what I pay them.

Sorry, I missed that one. Thanks.

I suppose that when you are the part of the ruling class which makes the 'laws' you can make something illegal for everyone else in the country then explicitly make an exception for yourself. Congress Quickly And Quietly Rolls Back Insider Trading Rules For Itself

Someone did a good deed. BostonMarathonConspiracy.com

The best possible outcome of all this Bitcoin business is if it increases the interest in digital currencies and creates a competition to create a better one (more secure, more decentralized, better privacy, faster, etc...). Bitcoin Isn’t the Only Cryptocurrency in Town - Currencies designed to fix perceived flaws in Bitcoin could lead to competition that makes the idea of digital “cryptocurrency” stick. and another one: Big-Name Investors Back Effort to Build a Better Bitcoin - Some of Silicon Valley’s best-known venture funds have backed OpenCoin, a startup with a new digital currency called Ripple.

From: Taxed for Life:

I sure hope he enjoyed it. I like the post shortly after where he withdraws his offer and says "I can't really afford to keep doing it since I can't generate thousands of coins a day anymore". I wonder if he saved any or he spent it all on pizza?

Oh good, gold is still on top. I don't want to have to listen to people talking about the Bieber standard.