Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 September 18

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September 18

Prime Minister of Canada Jean Chretien and Middle East

I remember that Jean Chretien went to Middle East like UAE when he was the Prime Minister. What was the reason of the visit to the Middle East? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.92.152.96 (talk) 02:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

After some quick googling, apparently the reason for the visit is to expand Canada's trading partners and soothe tensions in the Middle East (unsuccessfully). Royor (talk) 11:30, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Turkic people diaspora

I notice that Turks and Azeris have their diaspora page but what about Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and Turkmens? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.92.152.96 (talk) 02:45, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

That's more for Help Desk. If you want, you can make the pages about their diasporas. :) You will need an account to create pages though I'm afraid. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 02:47, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

See Category:Diasporas.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:22, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Orillion Bastion

Does anyone know what an "Orillion Bastion" is? Aside from them being around in the 16th century I can't find any info on what distinguishes an Orillion Bastion from any other type of Bastion.©Geni 03:18, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

They were bastions with ears meltBanana 03:38, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

VC by balloting?

According to Ernest Herbert Pitcher, he was awarded the Victoria Cross "by balloting". The sole reference states "P.O. Pitcher was selected by the crew of a gun of one of H.M. Ships to receive the Victoria Cross under Rule 13 of the Royal Warrant dated 29th January, 1856." Does this mean his crew mates got to pick him for the highest award in the British military? This seems to imply that the powers that be figured one was enough for the entire crew. What gives? Clarityfiend (talk) 04:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Duuh, never mind. It's described in the Victoria Cross article. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:53, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Literacy rates

Almost every human being can speak a language fluently, but in developing countries, only a much smaller percentage knows how to read and write. It seems that one way to instantly make the illiteracy rate 0 is to invent an alphabet and spelling system such that there's a one-to-one correspondence between a word's pronunciation and its spelling.

Why is this not being done? Also, why are so few languages like this, despite the obvious benefits of such a system？ --140.180.16.144 (talk) 05:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

likely because there are so many possible sounds it would be impossible. Hot Stop talk-contribs 05:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Interesting theory. A couple of points. Such languages have sort of been "invented". In fact, most languages are better than English in this regard. Languages like Malay and Indonesian, where the application of the western alphabet to the sounds is relatively recent, behave very consistently. Trouble is, there are many factors that contribute to literacy. A person has to want to read, and has to be given the opportunity to learn. With television rather than the print media being the common source of much information today, the motivation to read is lower. HiLo48 (talk) 05:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

As an aside, the IPA has one sound per symbol. Hot Stop talk-contribs 05:50, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Hangul was created for exactly the purpose the OP posited. It's a phonetic alphabet invented because Chinese ideograms were very difficult to learn for ordinary Koreans back in the 15th century. It makes you realize that the Latin alphabet, which is another phonetic alphabet, is already quite adequate for most purposes.

Phonetic alphabets are the simplest you can get if you want a one-to-one correspondence with sounds and symbols, and it's already very widespread. Yet it doesn't affect literacy rates in say, Africa. The answer is not because the Latin alphabet is complex, but because there simply aren't enough educational systems to teach it to people in the first place.

And for what it's worth, the apparent disparity between written and spoken language (words pronounced differently from how they are written) particularly in English and French, does not affect other languages like you think it does. It's the result of spoken languages evolving faster than written languages. Usually, the longer a language has been associated with a particular writing system, the larger the disparity. In languages that just recently adopted Latin script, it's not a problem.

And a side-note: comparable to Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia, our own national language - Filipino (which is really just Tagalog despite protestations of legislators otherwise), was itself an artificial construct. Unlike those languages, however, Filipino languages lost the native rudimentary writing systems (Baybayin) very early in the Philippine colonial history. Latin script came with the Spanish in the 16th century and has remained the only form of writing for majority of the islands (a notable exception are the predominantly Muslim autonomous regions in Southern and Western Mindanao which use Arabic scripts). When Filipino was first proposed, it was not to make it easier for ordinary people to learn to read and write, it was purely for nationalistic reasons. A means of pulling together a very young nation fresh from the clutches of two colonial powers. Legislators retained the Latin alphabet (whew), but culled consonants they considered 'foreign' - f, z, c, etc. They also recommended phonetically spelling foreign loanwords such that 'Airplane' became 'Erpleyn'. The goal was to erase traces of European influence as much as possible. The result was not an increase in literacy (it was already quite high in the first place, from Spanish education systems reinforced by American Thomasites), but an increase instead in the propensity of people to misspell and mispronounce foreign words. The only thing they accomplished was make the language cruder.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 06:45, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

If English adopted phonetic spelling the written language would be hideously complex to learn - not only would one need many extra symbols, but most words would have to be spelt differently in different places to account for the different pronunciations in different accents. DuncanHill (talk) 09:19, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Isn't Turkish like that? By which I mean, latin alphabet with all sorts of phonetic things. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 19:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Vietnamese is a lot worse than Turkish in that regard. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:01, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I doubt Vietnamese language is worse. Speaking as a person that fluent in English (not like master it but i can speak, write, read pretty well. Good enough for typical conversation) and Vietnamese. Vietnamese has exactly same alphabet as English except we don't use z and f. We added some accents, like those little marks above or under the words to make new words. Vietnamese is a easiest language to learn, it's not because i learn it first so i think it's easy. Every word has only 1 syllable. There is no past tense or anything like that. Example i can say i run today, i run yesterday, i run before. Not like most languages there are past tense, perfect tense... (all kinds of tenses) Words always stay the same as they are. They never change to different words. There is no exception, every words follow the rules. The word system we used today was developed in 17th century by a french guy. Before that we use Chinese characters. So since it was created recently, so people tried to make it super easy and organize unlike English as an example with thousands of years so there is no actual organize. In Vietnam, most kids would know how to spell and write all the words in about 3rd or 5th grade. You don't learn new vocab at school because there aren't any. There is no spelling bee because everyone knows how to spell every words. People know how to spell and write ALL the words but it doesn't mean they understand what they mean. Vietnamese people use 2 old words combined them together to get a new word. Example a word "cat" stand alone mean an animal and "finger" stand alone mean an organ in your hand. They combined together mean something else(i made up this example). So basically if there are new words you never see before in Vietnamese, they will be the combination of 2 old words you have seen before. So as the conclusion it's the easiest language to learn but the hardest part is the pronunciation. People just can't pronounce the words correctly because their tongues were not fit to it.Trongphu (talk) 02:19, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't dispute any of that. My remark was purely in response to the "Latin alphabet with all sorts of phonetic things" Sir William referred to. There are clearly more diacritics per average word in Vietnamese than in Turkish. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 02:57, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

(OP here) Interesting. So at least two languages--Hangul and Vietnamese--were invented because Chinese characters were too difficult to learn. It's obvious that Chinese itself could be replaced by a phonetic system--in fact, pinyin can represent the pronunciation of every valid character, plus a few sounds that don't correspond to any characters. I could write in pinyin when I was 6, as could almost every other Chinese child, but couldn't read or write in actual characters until much later. I'm pretty sure that any foreigner could learn pinyin in two days, so teaching a Chinese child how to read and write would be a trivial task if it were to replace the character system.

However, Chinese is tonal, which makes it very easy to use a tiny alphabet plus some accents to represent every sound. English and the Romance languages are not, so I wonder whether the same is true for these languages, or whether any phonetic alphabet would be too cumbersome to be useful. --140.180.16.144 (talk) 03:59, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

One writing system, a fairly recent invention (compared to most writing systems) which does match the spoken language rather closely is the Cherokee syllabary. Most languages writing systems were put into place so long ago that the natural and gradual changes which occur in spoken language aren't picked up by the writing system. English, for example, underwent the Great Vowel Shift during the 14th-15th century; English writings from the 1200s are understandable by modern speakers, but the language would have been almost impossible to understand to modern ears. Most languages have undergone similar changes over time to the way they are spoken, but the orthography (writing system) often doesn't keep up; the result is a situtation where what may have started out as a consistent system of writing, where the sounds matched the letters on the paper, drifts and changes to the point where the writing system no longer has a consistent one-to-one correspondence that it once did. --Jayron32 04:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, Jayron beat me again, I was going to mention the Cherokee syllabary. From what I've read it was fairly easy for the Cherokee of the time (early 1800s) to get the hang of, even for adults who had been illiterate all their lives. Some sources on this: [1]; [2] "within fourteen years of its introduction, and seven years of the first printing, more than half of all households in the Cherokee Nation had a reader of Cherokee"; [3], "Cherokees began learning the syllabrary 'almost overnight', and its use became widespread...almost everyone learned to read and write in their native language..." Of course the rapid adoption was not just because it was relatively easy and phonetic, but also due to the efforts of missionaries promoting it and the publishing of Cherokee Phoenix newspaper. Still, the tale of a people who had been almost totally illiterate (and even somewhat hostile to the idea of reading and writing) gaining significant levels of literacy within a decade or two is moving. Pfly (talk) 09:48, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Also, even in just the United States there are regional differences in pronunciations. It's not uncommon, for example, to hear something like "I axed you for a pin". Pfly (talk) 09:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Why are numbers written in the five (5) format?

This has been perplexing me for years: on most U.S. official documents, numbers are first spelled out and then written using a numeral in a bracket-e.g. five(5). An example of this would be File:Anthraxreward.jpg, but also school report cards, government forms and the like. Why? I'd presume anyone with sufficient literacy and language ability to read the document would also know how to count to ten. For whose benefit is the numeral included? Thanks, Puchiko (Talk-email) 09:56, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Simply to avoid confusion. Writing out amounts makes something more legible. Redundancy also makes it easier to spot errors. e.g. Five thousand (50000) < you will immediately know that the extra 0 is most likely a typo. The same reason why you write out numbers on checks. You wouldn't want to be paying $50,000 on a $5000 item just because you were scatterbrained that day and wrote an extra zero in.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 10:11, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

That reminds me. In my local bank, we have to fill in the withdrawal slips ourselves (because billions and billions of bailout money just isn't enough). I went to the bank the other day and tried to draw out a very small amount - less than you can get from an ATM, which is why I went into the bank itself. The girl at the window proceeded to count out £400 for me. I only wanted £4:00....... --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:51, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

IIRC, it's usually the other way around, e.g. 5 (five). This is to stop numbers being altered by, for example, people adding zeroes, and so on. I've never seen it done like 'five (5)'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

lol @ Yackmoore Phone Company. Bus stop (talk) 13:20, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I've never seen the "5 (five)" example; all my experience has been "five (5)." See the Apple One (1) Year Limited Warranty for example. Nyttend (talk) 19:08, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

One place I've seen them is on medicine, for example "three (3) doses daily"; I've always assumed that's so if one is obscured the right amount is still taken. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:37, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

And for a hand-written prescription, hopefully one or the other will be legible, despite the doctor's best effort at poor penmanship. StuRat (talk) 20:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

In Final Score and similar programmes, when football (soccer) teams score seven goals, it's usually rendered "7 (seven)". This is because the 7 looks similar to a 1 and the latter is common and the former very unusual, increasing the chances of a mistake. --Dweller (talk) 10:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for all the answers :) I didn't expect so many. Puchiko (Talk-email) 13:32, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

New ways to make money for those in financial straits? (Disability = hard to employ)

So I tried unconventional ways to earn money; turns out, I can't donate blood/plasma if I've been to Germany, even though I haven't been there for 21 years. (No signs of CJD after 21 years = very likely no CJD at all. Why can't the FDA acknowledge that?)

There is no sperm bank in 66502.
There is no skin bank in 66502.
I haven't seen a consignment secondhand goods store around town.

Disability + no work since 2009 = hardly a chance to get a job. (Thanks to the economy, the ratio of job-seekers to openings is so incredibly out of proportion, that even "not being employed for over 2 years" is enough of an excuse not to hire me, because even if they whittle down the criteria to "only consider those who currently have another job as of application date," there's still too many of them to interview.

So are there some un-common (legal) ways to get a better living? Paying off a private student loan with a federal student loan may be better interest-wise, but that's still paying off debt with debt. (Like "fighting fire with fire?")

More like "Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul". StuRat (talk) 21:26, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Pharmacological testing a is traditional source of income, though if you're not healthy you may have problems being accepted.

Gold farming is making money by earning items and experience on online role-playing games. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:17, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

You may be able to make a small living, or at least get some interesting stuff, by searching for online competitions and free product samples and applying for lots of stuff. There are specialist websites that will help. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:17, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Youtube for $?

I read that some make a living off of posting to YouTube. However, what are the odds of getting that to happen to me? How do I increase said odds? Where can I take (free) courses on how to edit videos so they all can look more professional and appealing to a wider audience? (What websites can I learn this, if no physical locations?)

What other great websites that I might not even know too much about, could I get paid to freelance, etc.?

There could be freelance writing; I can do that. What websites offer this though?

Can there be a selling venue of common intellectual property? (like drawings on MS Paint, or more stories, etc. to write?)

(Lastly, as for auctions, eBay/FeePay has gotten too expensive to sell there; they only seem to care about the big-wig sellers, not the everyday ma-and-pas. Is there a popular auction site that will cater to people like us? Thanks.) --70.179.163.168 (talk) 19:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Freelancing web sites include http://elance.com, http://freelancer.com, http://guru.com, http://odesk.com, and http://vworker.com. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 20:46, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

For selling many cheap things, like under $10 each, you may do better to sell them locally, as the shipping costs eat up any profit, otherwise. Perhaps a garage sale or swap meet ? (Does your disability allow you to leave the house ?) StuRat (talk) 20:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

For writing, you might want to do something like proofreading student's papers for them before they turn them in, so they can fix all their mistakes. StuRat (talk) 20:56, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

You could also find ways of dealing with this disability, and go for a 'normal' job. Quest09 (talk) 00:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

63336 employs people to find answers to questions; you work at home on your computer. Probably there are other organisations. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:26, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Buttons, buttons.

As a female blond, I should know this - but I don't. It shows you how dumb I am. Why are the buttons on a female's blouse on the left side and on a man's shirt on the right side?--Christie the puppy lover (talk) 20:32, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Some people say it's because women didn't carry swords or other weapons - for men, the sword (usually carried in a scabbard on the left, and drawn with the right hand) would catch on the 'lip' of the shirt if it buttoned the other way. Others say it's because in the old days, women had maids who would dress them, so it was easier for the maid if the buttons were on the other side. No-one actually knows. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 20:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

(ec with update to KageTora's answer) Or because women who wore buttoned clothes used to be dressed by maids. Or nobody really knows. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:51, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that it has more to do with jackets than shirts. If you want to reach into your jacket and draw your sword, you need the left hand side of the jacket to be over the right hand side. The shirt then just buttons the same way as the jacket. --Tango (talk) 21:59, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

That is a possibility. The thing is, swords were usually worn outside everything, including jackets. I think it would be very uncomfortable to be wearing a jacket over your sword. A long winter coat, maybe, but only if it's open, defeating the purpose of where the buttons go. "Sir, please be a gentleman and wait while I unbutton my jacket so I can get my sword out to parry your wiley surprise attack, what!". :-) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:27, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

While those might explain the origin, the reason it remains this way is that we feel the need to have gender-specific clothing, the classic example being pink and blue clothes for baby boys and girls. If our society valued unisex clothing, then our clothes would all button on the same side (or both button on either side). StuRat (talk) 20:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Ironically, Stu, according to QI, pink was originally for boys, and blue for girls. Everything changed around the beginning of the 20th century, I believe. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:01, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

So The Blue Boy was a cross-dresser ? :-) StuRat (talk) 21:24, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Only in the same way as Pinkie was. ;-) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:41, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Some detailed discussion of the topic here. The answer seems to be that nobody knows. Alansplodge (talk) 22:28, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you boys and girls for clearing that up. I guess I am not as dumb as I thought I was.--Christie the puppy lover (talk) 22:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Why doesn't capitalism work?

The protesters in New York City recently are asking a question I'd like to know the answer to myself: why doesn't capitalism work? And I'll add, when did it stop working? For example:

1) Supposedly gas prices are the outcome of supply and demand. So why did the fall of oil prices from $100 a barrel to $82 a barrel produce no relief in prices? Why do governments which have taken active steps to manipulate gas prices not experience shortages, but instead the companies simply keep selling at the lower rate? (For example Honduras exercised a contract clause to take over oil storage tanks in 2007 and announced a 42-cent price decrease, ^[4] but the only news I see about gas shortages came with the ensuing coup against Manuel Zelaya in 2009)

2) Supposedly labor is a good traded on the market. So why can't the unemployed simply lower their price and get back to work at any time?

3) Supposedly profit encourages businesses to expand and make more profit. So why is it that businesses in the U.S. have been making record profits, but do nothing to expand and hire people?

4) In Republican fantasy, when they explain why millionaires must continue to pay lower tax rates than the middle class, they say that this is necessary because they are "job creators". But where are the jobs? And I've heard that small businesses lead employment recovery - doesn't that mean the middle class is the job creator? Why can't the middle class create jobs?

Was capitalist theory always this irrelevant to reality? If not, what changed to make it that way? Wnt (talk) 20:36, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

this answer is funded in part by paragraph breaks supplied by stu rat

It is simply a mistake to say that "capitalism doesn't work". Capitalism is about using resources that are worth something and owned by someone using them to create value that did not exist before the person or entity using that resource created that value. In other words, capitalism is not prescriptive, it is descriptive of what happens when you have de facto or legally recognized private property.

There is no way to allow private property and free selling and buying without resulting in capitalism. It is a simple fact of nature that if people can have private property, they can create value, and the minute you let them buy and sell it freely, you have people using resources of value to create more value -- bam, you have capitalism. The only way to eliminate capitalism is to make it illegal for people to own private property.

Even this does not work: people will continue to own themselves; they (or their families) can invest, if nothing else, time, into their education, thereby making their personal resource worth more. They thereby create value. Think of the city you're in: would you be worth any more if you learned French fluently and could teach it to people who didn't know it yet? Of course you would be worth more. You just used resources (time and maybe money) to create value. Unfortunately for communist countries, this, and only a few other ways of creating value, were "allowed", and the state had to steal every other means of production.

Here's an answer to some of your questions:

"Supposedly labor is a good traded on the market. So why can't the unemployed simply lower their price and get back to work at any time?"

At what price would you take French lessons from a Persian Cat who grew up in Paris? Is it twenty cents an hour? Would you take two hours of lessons from that French cat for 40 cents? You would not. The cat is not able to create 40 cents worth of value by giving French lessons. Likewise, the unemployed might not be able to create even $1 of value per hour. If they or their families invested time and money into their education and increasing their skills, this value would increase.

Under communism, where every other means of production must be stolen by the state, this is the only acceptable means for increasing a person's value. In a free country, a person can increase his value in a multitude of other ways: such as by dressing respectably and being hired due to looking presentable (under communism private clothes are illegal, and the state must determine and supply all clothing: you can't just be having object fetishism willy nilly, which is what good clothes sold at a good shop front would be).

Or you could getting a van and open a business using it on it (you would at a minimum need some special license I guess under communism, you can't just buy and sell whatever service you want just by registering a company -- after all, what if you employed someone? Only the state may employ someone, since anything else is slavery), etc etc.

Or you could get a printing press and print nice posters and make photocopies etc. But not under communism, where you can't own a private press and buy and sell a good freely.

The key thing about capitalism is freedom: you have to actively suppress a person's right to buy and sell property and services, including their labor, to prevent capitalism. Anything else is capitalism by definition automatically.

"Supposedly profit encourages businesses to expand and make more profit. So why is it that businesses in the U.S. have been making record profits, but do nothing to expand and hire people"

Businesses can do whatever they like. Why would a family with two children who are in their twenties and rich lawyers not want to produce a third child to eventually make a lot of money, if the parents are still fertile? Just because you are doing well does not mean you want to expand operations.

"Was capitalist theory always this irrelevant to reality? If not, what changed to make it that way?"

In fact, you don't have to believe "capitalist theory" for capitalist facts to be true. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 20:52, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Have a few paragraph breaks, on me: ¶,¶,¶. :-) StuRat (talk) 21:17, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the resource.

Also, to put a real monkey wrench in the thing. Even though if you have ANY private property and right to buy and sell property, you automatically have capitalism, in my opinion it is completely obvious that you have to take SOME of these rights away if you want anything like a well-functioning society or progress.

That's because why doesn't someone have the right to come up to you as you're setting up that copier or poster printer I mentioned above and say, "Look, kid, you're attracted by the $40/poster market rate, aren't you. You figure you can get in for $2000 worth of machinery and break even in a year.

Well, thing is, we would like to keep these $40 and actually us producers are moving up to $50 two months from now. But we can only do that if everyone is in. How's about I pay you $2000 right now to keep hush hush and follow our pricing, welcome to our trust." You'll take it, won't you, after all he has just removed all your risk or you can repay your loan or backer. But this reasoning works for everything from sugar to oil to metal.

If we allowed people this "freedom", we never would have computers, as potentially every single input into that would have been priced out of commodity prices and into unattainable land. So, it's pretty obvious to me that you can't just allow someone to form a trust and create a monopoly -- we played this game in the 19th century, and everyone lost out. So, even though ANY amount of freedom to own goods and buy and sell goods and services instantly results in capitalism, it's obvious that you have to remove at least parts of these freedoms if you want a society worth living in. That's what the question almost always revolves around -- how much of these freedoms to remove. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 23:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I numbered your questions so I can respond in kind:

1) Price fixing can cause prices to be higher than competition would produce. If so, then government limits on prices would work, until the profit margin was so low that the companies could make more money by investing elsewhere.

2) Minimum wage doesn't allow this, and having a social safety net means people might prefer to live on welfare rather than take such low-paying jobs. Also, the large number of illegal immigrants means the low-paying jobs are already taken.

3) They've been expanding overseas. Also, expanding only makes sense where you have an expanding market or market share.

4) Whether small business owners are middle-class or rich depends on the politician talking and which way the wind is blowing. And giving money to rich people doesn't help the economy nearly as much as it does to give it to the poor. The reason is that the poor tend to spend all the money they get immediately, and locally, thus helping the local economy. StuRat (talk) 21:05, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Lack of competition from consolidation and de facto collusion troubles the petroleum markets, but there is nothing antitrust regulators can do. It's congress's job to impose more effective taxes in the absence of clear evidence of conspiracy in the face of record profits and rising gas prices on declining oil prices. But that brings us to the real problem, which is the lack of public campaign financing which makes congresspeople beholden to contributors from large companies and the rich likely invested in them. Several major reforms (health care, tax, renewable energy, sentencing, patent, etc.) all are heavily inhibited by campaign contributions. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)In general people are indifferent. The answers to your questions are amazingly pragmatic, i.e. completely emotionless.

• I don't know enough about this topic, so sorry
• Price ceilings and price floors are impediments to free trade, so it is said. Even if a worker wished to trade his labor for money at less thean minimum wage it would be illegal, as far as I understand
• The business I am employed by is making "profit." Is accounting the same as reality? The company's debts are owed to the personal funds of the owner.
• The jobs are in a trust fund to be doled out when there is trust in funds.

Lastly, government run by man has always always always failed. "Their" way is deficient; so is yours. Schyler (exquirere bonum ipsum) 21:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

"Capitalism," such that it is, works just fine. It still keeps a small group of people who control the means of production in control (this is of course a very simplistic explanation). Your fourth question is the most telling in this regard, the middle class can't create jobs because they don't control the means to produce much of anything. Capitalism isn't intended to be good for everyone and in my opinion is actually bad for virtually everyone, but that's a different question. --Daniel 22:07, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't buy the minimum wage explanation. If that were the explanation, the occupations with high unemployment would be those already paying minimum wage, but those with higher wages would see a free market wage drop and an increase in the number of people employed. I don't see an indication that this is what happened. Wnt (talk) 00:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the assumption that employers would all hire more workers if they were cheaper (or an infinite number if they were free) is faulty. First off, the wages are only a small portion of the total cost incurred by an employee. There are also benefits, administrative costs, managers needed to manage them, risk of lawsuits, supplies, training, etc.

And more employees doesn't necessarily make your company more productive. It rather depends on the type of work being done. For physical labor, more hands is probably helpful, but not so with mental work. Hiring two computer programmers to write the same program isn't likely to get it done in half the time, it may even take longer.

Finally, the assumption that companies want to be more productive is not always true, either. This is only the case if they have more demand for their product or service than they can meet with their current staff. Let's say the employer is a newspaper. If they hire more columnists, are they going to make the paper thicker ? A newspaper with twice as many columnists isn't likely to be worth twice as much to customers, so such a decision might not be in the best interest of the financial health of the company. StuRat (talk) 04:47, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Capitalism is the very worst economic system ... with the exception of every other system that has ever been tried. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:51, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

When you say protestors do you mean the Israelis protesting in Time Square? I haven't heard of any other protests recently (King Michael is good about keeping those in check). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 23:46, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Saturday "Anonymous" protest against Wall Stret, bankers, and plutocratic greed: Occupy Wall Street... AnonMoos (talk) 00:17, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

My buddy Nolan explained to me about these guys, and how they say they were inspired by the Tahrir Square guys, but the motivations and behaviours are actually hand in hand with those of the Israeli protests, but considerably less effective given how few there are. He then lamented the fact that most Americans are too lazy and apathetic to join, etc. and stated his belief that the protestors should riot (which the NYPD are really huge fans of btw; their nightsticks are even bigger fans) I'm not sure we have seen an actual failure of capitalism as well to be honest, but my mum is the one with a BA in Econ (and a JD in ERISA :p). We are just seeing the perfect storm of economic cock-ups. It might mean that it takes longer to recover, but as far as I know, there will be recovery (as part of the holy boom-bust cycle). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 21:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Capitalism was designed to not work. It is proven every 80 years, and has been written above in terms of linen and coats. →Στc. 01:30, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, it depends on what we mean by work here. If we mean it's meant to enrich people, then it does (a small number of people though). Then again, I guess that my family and I count as owners of the means of production so it works in our eyes (but not, say, for my buddy Nolan who has to work in retail even though he is well-educated and very clever; or my genius buddy Michael who cannot attend college as he is too poor and not stupid enough to take out college loans). Hmmm, wait, that doesn't work well at all. =/ Given that this whole topic invites people to give opinions, I think it's a mix of capitalism and socialism that helps to support the less wealthy while still encouraging people to compete and make money (with lots of nice regulation on private enterprise to ensure there are no companies that get too powerful, raise prices too high or sacrifice quality). How do you define working in this case my good Sigma? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 01:41, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I have discussed my thoughts in my earlier days on the wiki. The conversations have been archived in two subpages of my talk page. You are free to look at them if you wish, though I do not bandy about my past of inappropriate usage of talk pages as a platform for irrelevant material. →Στc. 01:54, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

If, by capitalism, you mean laissez faire capitalism, the petroleum industry is the worst of possible examples. It is hugely regulated by the government regarding additives, building refineries, and limits on drilling. It is very highly taxed. A much better example of laissez faire would be the internet, which, at least until recently, has been untaxed and unregulated. If you want to read a standard Austrian school defense of laissez faire capitalism, here is a free pdf of a definitive modern defense from George Reisman's http://www.capitalism.net/. What we have in the modern west are various forms of mixed economies with the government usually controlling somewhere around or more than 50% of the GDP. The US was closest to laissez faire capitalism from the end of the civil war 1865-1890 to the adoption of the first anti-trust legislation, with monopolies and subsides given to railroads in that era being a notable exception. Grover Cleveland was the greatest actual and effective champion of laissez faire. The progressives Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson ended the capitalist era in the US with their militarism, trust busting, regulation, bureaucratic racism, the drug war, the institution of the draft and modern central banking with the creation of the Federal Reserve, which caused the boom that lead to the depression. Nixon finally broke all ties with reality by going off the gold standard. Ironically, Communist China is much less regulated and the Communist Party only controls about 15% of the GDP, hence their boom. Were they to eschew militarism and adopt objective law and an independent judiciary to protect the property rights of all individuals they would have the freest society on earth. μηδείς (talk) 01:18, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

If you're holding up the 1890s as the acme of capitalism in the U.S., then many people would have little desire to return to the societal and business structures of that period. Anyway, I think it can be agreed that in most circumstances (not all) unrestrained capitalism is great at generating economic activity, but not so good at ensuring that such activity doesn't have many overall negative social consequences... AnonMoos (talk) 05:02, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The point was that trade was the freest in the US during that period, not that there was something magical about all the other cultural aspects of that time. It's rather odd to imply that a return to free trade would mean resurrecting corsets and reservation wars. As for negative social consequences, I doubt you can point out any that weren't actually caused or worsened by government interference rather than free trade itself. Free trade simply means that--trade which is neither prohibited by nor subsidized by the government. Free trade doesn't mean social conservativism, special favors for big business, Jim Crow, allowing polluters to destroy property without having to pay to clean up the messes they make, the freedom to commit fraud in sales or advertising, or any of the other sorts of things leftists like to tar it with. It just means free trade, the goverment neither stopping people from voluntarily buying and selling nor forcing such buying and selling. The hidden premise behind this thread is the equation of "big business" with capitalism as such, and the implication that because such government-created and regulated monsters as the Oil industry have problems that free trade has failed. Monsters like BP, which got government favors from Britain in regard to Libya and the Lockerbie bomber and from the US which bore the cost of the Gulf oil spill are not the products of free trade but of cronyism at the highest levels. Criticisms of such entities are not criticisms of free trade but of government corruption and incompetence at the highest levels. μηδείς (talk) 16:29, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I had in mind plutocratic "robber barons", monopolistic "trusts", and brazenly-corrupt politics much more than corsets and handlebar moustaches. There was a certain kind of unsavory and exploitative individual such as Charles Yerkes who seemed to flourish in the conditions of the 1890s -- no matter how many times the voters of Chicago unequivocally sent the message at elections that they wanted to get rid of the hated "traction railway" monopolies on public transit (i.e. low-quality shoddy accident-prone level-ground cable cars), it took them well over a decade to make any progress at all, and in the meantime Charles Yerkes retreated unobstructed to Philadelphia with a very large bag of cash... AnonMoos (talk) 18:17, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, the problem is that terms like robber barons and "monopolistic" trusts are inherently derogatory and rife with POV. Companies like Standard Oil became large by providing a new good at a low price which appealed to all consumers. They had no more "monopolistic" ability to force people to buy their products or need to steal their land with government backing than does (or did) Netflix. Actual monopolies are only created when they government grants and defends such privileges (i.e., private laws) with the threat of legal penalties. Industries like many of the railroads (notorious in California) were granted government subsidies and allowed to seize private land by corrupt officials. Tarring both as robber barons simply because they were big businesses is hardly fair. Government intervention on the side of one business against another or against the public or to further illiberal ends such as racial segregation (note that the racial segregation of passenger rails was forced by government regulation against the wishes of the industry) is the antithesis of free trade. One has to give specific examples of such evils. When you find them you will always find either short-term self-liquidating criminality (Enron--brought to you by Paul Krugman) or stupidity (Netflix), which is rightly punished by the courts or the markets, or, more likely, politically connected corruption at a grand scale such as Trent Lott's obstruction of dealing with the Worldcom/MCI fraud and bankruptcy or the government seizure of GM with money legally owed to bondholders under bankruptcy law funneled to the UAW instead. For real long term robber baronism and abusive monopolies look at the Soviet Union and our man from the KGB, Vladimir Putin. In Russia the capitalists have all been jailed or assassinated. There is plenty of outrage to go around at such corruption, but the ones to blame for institutionalized corruption are the ones accepting the campaign contributions--and who hold the monopoly on jails and guns.μηδείς (talk) 18:07, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

What is the ESTA good for?

What is the point of asking questions like this: "Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies? " Would someone ever answer yes? Has someone been caught with that silly question? What happen if you answer yes, just as a joke? Besides that, the question is poorly written, I think. If you persecuted Nazis, like Simon Wiesenthal, you should also answer yes. But maybe it's just me being a Grammar Nazi. Quest09 (talk) 22:05, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm struggling to understand how Wiesenthal persecuted anyone, but perhaps that's just me being a semantics fascist. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 23:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Persecution doesn't imply unlawful persecution. If you are trying that a group of people (drug dealers, child molesters, war criminals) get imprisoned, that's persecution too. Quest09 (talk) 23:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

To me (and our article on the topic), mistreatment is an element of persecution. One could argue that someone being tracked down for prosecution is being mistreated (because it is stressful, limits a normal life, etc.) but then society as a whole would be persecuting a pretty wide range of individuals, yet nobody seems to describe it that way (although I suppose even that is up for debate). Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 00:12, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Using the word persecution, as a legitimate persecution, is not that rare: "The additional available resources will allow police to focus enforcement on other issues such as persecuting drug dealers (...)" or "They bomb us under the pretext that first, they are eliminating the guerilla forces and second, they are persecuting drug dealers, ..." or "Caribbean nations, including Jamaica, that allow their ships to enter their territorial water persecuting drug dealers, but drug traffic keeps growing (...)" Or even better: Simon Wiesenthal persecuted a single Pole"Quest09 (talk) 00:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I still cringe when I see that usage, but I concede the point. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 00:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Looks to me that ESTA is good at getting the US government $14 for each person who gets it... Googlemeister (talk) 18:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

It's my understanding that once someone has entered the US under ESTA, simply being in one of those categories (that make someone ineligible for "visa free travel") isn't grounds alone for prompt deportation. But lying on the form is. So, supposedly, it streamlines the removal of someone who wasn't eligible but who got in anyway. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:22, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Nobody really expects that you will answer in a positive manner if you did or are doing any of these things. Their purpose is to give the government a legal reason to strip you of your new citizenship and to expel you from the country (if you're an immigrant) when someone finds that you're guilty of any of these things. An US citizen is obliged by law to inform the government if he is working for any foreign government. With such a law the government has something to prosecute a spy because he obviously failed to obey the law. Flamarande (talk) 22:26, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

"involved" is an ambiguous word; it can mean either "implicated" or "concerned in some way with". They mean the former, but I'm not sure what they'd say to be clearer; "implicated" or "concerned with the commission of" is perhaps better, but not perfect either. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:29, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

The really complicated part is the "moral turpitude" question. Very few applicants are, our could be argued to be, war criminals or enemy spies. Given the context, you'd think "moral turpitude" means crimes that are also fairly rare and particularly vile; when I first saw it on an I-94/W I (like I imagine most people) thought it meant something akin to "are you a child molester?" But as the Wikipedia article shows, moral turpitude can be a complicated and rather surprising one. Someone with a 40 year old conviction for burglary would (on the face of it) fail, but someone who'd recently been convicted of loan sharking would pass. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:09, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

As a foreigner who has answered that question the OP describes a few times myself, and been in the company of several others when they have answered it, I observe that almost every time it has to be answered it leads to declarations about what a dumb question it is, and how stupid the American government is for asking such a dumb question. Now, to Americans reading this, please don't shoot the messenger here. I'm simply telling you how some foreigners perceive this question. And while you can easily say "We don't care", I suspect that at some level at least some of you do. Maybe the "real" reason (Is it outlined well enough up above yet?) for this odd question could be made clearer to those having to answer it. HiLo48 (talk) 00:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I also dread entering the US and dealing with annoying forms. But the underlying requirements are not unique to the US. Canada has a very similar set of rules; you just don't have to fill out a form when you cross the border. If a Canadian border guard asked the corresponding Canadian question, would it be dumb for the same reasons outlined above? Is it the use of "moral turpitude," the meaning of which is absolutely opaque to anyone entering the country? To me, it's the combination of both: the form plus the impenetrable wording. The rules themselves are not that big of a deal. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 02:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

The rules are OK, although overdone at times. It's the dumb questions that are the problem. They lead to mockery and a lessening of respect, where it's the opposite that is presumably desired. HiLo48 (talk) 02:28, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

As previously stated, the question exists as part of the regime for kicking war criminals out of the country once they're already in the country, not for keeping them out of the country to begin with. For example, the granting of citizenship is generally irrevocable -- unless the government can prove that the person lied to get into the country or obtain citizenship. This is how John Demjanjuk had his citizenship revoked. When he applied to immigrate in 1951, he didn't mention being a death-camp guard. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Also as previously stated, the question makes the American government look like a bunch of fools. It may serve a purpose, but it gives a lousy impression to the millions of foreigners who are forced to answer it every year. HiLo48 (talk) 10:26, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Demjanjuk didn't mention it because he possibly never was a death-camp guard, and the whole German trial was just a farce to make Germany look tough on Nazi criminals in a rather pathetic way. But that is a topic for a different question. 88.8.79.204 (talk) 03:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Probably he wasn't but it is more likely that he was, or do you truly believe that the US court simply decided to strip him of his US citizenship and to expel him so "that Germany may look tough on Nazi criminals in a rather pathetic way"? Jesus, I see this so often: "the German who wasn't even born before 1945 has to pay and keep paying for the Holocaust and WWII". Even in the United 93 (film)#Criticism. They had to portray the only German passenger as a hysterical coward compared to the brave and courageous American passengers and crew. Screw this pathetic self-righteous "we are holier than the Germans" attitude. Take your cheap shot at another nation, preferably your own (whatever it may be). Flamarande (talk) 03:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I said he possibly was not and you reply with "it is more likely that he was"??? That's REALLY a serious reason to convict him and THAT's what I mean by pathetic. Note: I didn't watch the film, and commenting it here is also not relevant. 88.8.79.204 (talk) 03:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Let's end this. You wrote that "the whole German trial was just a farce to make Germany look tough on Nazi criminals in a rather pathetic way". If this was meant in an ironic way then I'm truly sorry, but it's kind of hard to hear/read an ironic tone of voice. Flamarande (talk) 04:04, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

It's amazing how my question ended at such topic. Quest09 (talk) 13:15, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Godwin's law, man. It's alive and kicking. Flamarande (talk) 20:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)