pastProlog

6 ms·

1.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Fortune's Global 500 top 10 is: Walmart $482B in revenue a year State Grid $329B China Natural Petroleum $299B Sinopec $294B Shell $272B ExxonMobil $246B Volkswagen $236B Toyota $236B Apple $233B BP $255B Six o
2.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> The entire concept of fiat currency is abstraction Then why does the US still maintain over 8000 tons of gold at Fort Knox and elsewhere, 45 years after closing the gold window? Of course even before 1971 paper currency was an abstract
3.
by pastProlog 10y ago
One of the great men of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. That he will be vilified by the soon-to-be-led-by-Trump empire to his north, and Cuba's old idle class, which now lives in Florida, is a given. The empire's last
4.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> It seems reasonable to argue that bail-outs for banks amid broad woes for workers led to a loss of confidence in the system. Well that's one thing. We were told abolishing Glass-Steagall needed to be done because it was only some
5.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> The 'idle' class is not actually 'idle', and if they are then usually their parents were not 'idle' Heirs who do not work and live off the profits of worker's labor are idle. Certainly their parents
6.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. If everybody is working in this process, then where do the people who expropriate
7.
by pastProlog 10y ago
One thing missing from the list: a real worker's movement that is threatening to the wealthy. People remember the Russian Revolution toward the end of World War I, what they tend to forget is that Hungary had a revolution and became a
8.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> free trade Who said TPP had anything to do with free trade? Various powerful interest groups lobby and shove economic capture for themselves into these deals, transferring power over these matters from American voters to some internati
9.
by pastProlog 10y ago
One person who has been clear-headed about this for weeks is Michael Moore. Michigan and Wisconsin were supposed to be in the bag for Hillary, but that looks like where the surprise swing is coming from. Moore said from on the ground it f
10.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Many of the people on HN are in their twenties, some of us are slightly older. In 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed a black church in Birmingham and killed four little girls, because the church supported the rights of blacks to vote. Blacks we
11.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Far down in this article, Apple co-founder Rod Holt explains what he thought it was about Steve Jobs that put him into the vanguard. http://louisproyect.org/2015/08/28/steve-jobs Particularly the part where h
12.
by pastProlog 10y ago
One reason the Industrial Revolution happened in northern England is manor lords began seizing the land that belonged in common to the peasants and enclosing it. Newly impoverished peasants would then become cheap labor for industrial fact
13.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Putting aside who is better, Trump or Clinton - Clinton and the DNC establishment support National Security Letters, NSA spying, PRISM, Echelon, the idea that if you're not doing anything wrong, you have no expectation of privacy. On
14.
by pastProlog 10y ago
During the 2008 recession, Monthly Review put together some scary 1960-2008 charts on economic indicators not mentioned in this article ( http://monthlyreview.org/2008/12/01/financial-implosion-and-... ). Oft
15.
by pastProlog 10y ago
From 1933 to 1953, the Democratic party held the presidency in the United States. Twenty years out of power is said to have been one of the factors leading to McCarthyism. McCarthy called it "20 years of treason" (then once he s
16.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> Battery technology is a lot like bitcoin and gold in that once it is manufactured, users are not dependent upon a state controlled centralized network for it. Gold is just a commodity, it does not have any magical properties. Since go
17.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> they should not be forced to join the union (with whom they disagree) just to be able to provide for their families. But you're obviously OK with people being forced to join corporations (with whom they disagree) just to be able
18.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Maduro was elected president. There's no vote upcoming, just yet another recall referendum, this one which failed to get going in the courts. Honduras on the other hand had an elected president. Obama bankrolled his generals, who ove
19.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> the effective kind of cocky/jerk behavior that works well with some women Some guys come to think that they are not cocky/jerky, but other guys are, and that this behavior "works well with some women". It's odd
20.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> I don't understand how 43% of the country supports Trump. I don't understand how 43+% of the country supports Hillary. A lot of what Trump says makes sense to me - questioning why the US military is involved all over the wor
21.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Cambodia had a monarchy and stability (relative to its neighbors), but Sihanouk refused US requests to get involved in the Vietnam war, so the US began a campaign to destabilize the country, eventually replacing Sihanouk with a puppet gover
22.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> I don't see any fundamental change in scarcity in the last few years. I do. There have always been economies of scale, but the first shipment of Call of Duty costs tens of millions of dollars. Shipments #2 to #1000000 over the w
23.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> most people tend to be mediocre As the article points out, most jobs are mediocre. Good work is not appreciated, a company can't form a team that works normal hours and uses tests and version control, autonomy and learning is low,
24.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> the bias here in SV against conservatives can even be considered a form of classism Conservatives want to abolish estate taxes, which would entrench the class system of workers versus heirs.
25.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> No change is necessary. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Why was it changed in 1998? ISI was perfectly capable of handling the function. Ted Cruz is indignant that the US Department of Commerce is transitioning out of a rol
26.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> What exactly is wrong with the current setup? What exactly was wrong with the 1998 setup? ISI and Jon Postel were managing fine back then. I also don't recall a "US control over ICANN" that could be "relinquished&q
27.
by pastProlog 10y ago
The author, Michael Straight, later said he was a KGB operative at the time he wrote this.
28.
by pastProlog 10y ago
It talks about effects on the culture, but things mentioned like the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan happened over half a century ago. You may as well talk about how World War I affected the culture. Kids don't listen to rock and lis
29.
by pastProlog 10y ago
The US government canceled his passport at some point between him being in Hong Kong and the Moscow airport. So the claim he "fled to Russia" is a lie. He was exiled to Russia by the US officials who actively removed his ability
30.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Can you name some of the advancements that heirs who have never worked a day in their lives have brought in the US over the last 10-20 years? Who live off the labor of those of us who do work, the labor time of which they expropriate with

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