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That's not exactly how Occam said it. :) Occam argued that we should not assume any unnecessary entities to exist when explaining something. For example, atheists often apply Occam's razor against the existence of God, because it is an unnecessary hypothesis while explaining how the world...

Do you know anything at all about diversification or investing over long periods of time? In the long run, stock returns should in theory converge towards that 8%. By diversifying in multiple stocks/bonds/whatever, the risks diminish substantially while the returns will even faster converge...

I can reply you: link another link yet another link That website might be overly optimistic, but take a look at it nevertheless. :p

Indeed. Where do we need any political systems anyway? Lets just abolish the coercive government and switch to anarcho-capitalism. ;)

Since I suspect many people here are interested in reading about history, here is a list of Killers of the 20th century. Not so surprisingly, many of them were commie dictators. Governments never run out of money; just start up the printing machines to eliminate any shortage of cash. :goodjob:

Yet again another puppet ruler, it seems... ;)

The situation luiz described reminds me what is happening in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez has been very eager to set up numerous social programs to "help the poor", nationalize oil industries and "redistribute" farming land. And the results? GDP plummeted, poverty increased and now the country is...

luceafarul, but you must also take into account that the match got a huge amount of publicity and nearly the whole world was watching. Kasparov also had to "defend the humanity". ;) I think the Deep Blue team just tried to out psych their opponent, so that Kasparov would blunder (which he did)...

Interesting question. It may not be as simple as it sounds first. Smokers pay significant amount of taxes when they buy cigarettes (in many countries). And if they pass away before they manage to retire, they might not, ummh... overload the precious state-funded pension system. :mischief: I...

In my opinion, the definition of mixed economy is not something where the government is simply limited to overseeing personal liberty, property rights and freedom of contract. That's the main point in this debate. What you're trying to prove with that? On the other hand, what prevents some...

Luckily, www.capitalism.org has an article tailored for this debate :) Not supporting anarcho-capitalism while supporting real capitalism (e.g. not a mixed economy) is not contradictory.

Yes, with confiscation of property I also referred to taxation. The main problem in providing a "free" healthcare and education to everybody lies in fact you probably can't do that without limiting other people's liberties (because of the required taxation). It's also quite dubious to put these...

So this is the paper we are talking about, right? I just took a look at it and found a couple of interesting articles: And how do they plan to implement "free" healthcare and social security benefits? By taxation of course, which is contradictory with the right to property. Oh wait... I forgot...

Chessgames.com has an useful Opening Explorer. It's a little limited to non-premium members on the other hand.

A factor of 1000 is maybe a little overestimated. And it only applies to calculating chess minimax algorithm. Deep Blue used 256 special purpose chess processors in parallel. Today the top commercial programs can play at roughly the same level because of their superior pattern-based pruning...

Luckily communist nations are so eco-friendly that they automatically dissolve after 80 years or so.

Yes, you're very close. We only need to discount the projected sum with a particular interest rate and an estimated risk factor. 4% + 6% = 10% could be quite realistic. Let's assume the individual is fully educated*, healthy** and eager to work. This year he might produce n $ worth of goods...

Good post, but there's something you didn't mention: people can be enhanced too. What if someone designs a brain implant or some kind of a drug which improves the learning capabilities of people? At least up to today people have been "enhanced" with superior education, but in future it might be...

Capitalism 2 is great. :goodjob: Yes you can. You just have to build a small factory and use that as a warehouse to transport goods to the other city. Btw, I think I know the quickest way to become a billionaire in that game. Want to learn it? Ok: build a logging camp, a factory and a...

Hell no. You're twisting my arguments. (No, I'm not saying there aren't any inconsistencies, but the majority of them are consistent.)