Bonam

Except not. And in any case the immigration you crave for only helps to further concentrate wealth.

Which of course is entirely predictable, but is purposefully not foreseen.

Solar panels on a car (whether conventional or using some new technology discussed above) would just allow a small amount of charge to be recovered while the car is parked where there is light. It would take many days out in full sunlight to recharge an electric car battery completely, given the small amount of area available for solar panels on a car. That said, it could be a nice little benefit, or could be used to run/charge small devices. For example, I know some people that have camper vans with solar panels installed, and use them to charge phones, runs laptops, run a radio or small electric heater, etc, without turning on the engine. For most normal vehicles though, the cost of installing solar panels on it would likely not be worth the small amount of extra energy that could be recovered.

"ALWAYS" is a long time. A lot can change as technology changes. I.e. if people spend most of their time in a virtual reality (see the thread on that), or if people implement a system that doesn't run on money (see the thread on that), etc. Also, staying closer to the current paradigm rather than far-fetched stuff, there are "non-physical" currencies that the government also "doesn't monitor" (or monitors no more than it monitors cash, anyway). Bitcoin, for example. Or, humankind or human civilization could cease to exist and that would also entail the end of physically exchangeable currency (at least in this corner of the galaxy). Anyway, I think you are likely right, for the foreseeable future, there will be physically exchangeable currency. But the foreseeable future is only a few decades, hence why I used that timespan in my previous post.

How does he "leave it out"? The details of the small increase in economic class immigrants are right there in the linked article. The increase in economic class immigrants is expected because of the expected drop in the number of refugees in 2017 relative to 2016.

I actually have nothing against cash. I expect that it will continue to exist for at least the next couple decades, which is as far forward as anything can be foreseen.

I don't think I've ever seen a kid running a lemonade stand in my life. Are we actually sure this is still a thing that needs a payment solution?

Well clearly a lot of people fall to even much more imperfect simulations of a more blissful world, even when they're physical body is not being taken care of. An obvious example is drugs that make you feel good. And certainly creating an option which has even more powerful rewards than this (being able to live out all your fantasies) while also keeping your body in perfect health would appeal to more people. But in the end it's just an escape. Would you be happy living in the simulation that someone else invented, that someone else keeps functioning, and which is only ever likely to be improved if someone else does so? I don't think I would be. I want to make some contribution, to affect the course or events, to further some aspect of technology, science, civilization, etc. Even if we have fancy simulations that let people live out their fantasy lives, there are always more things to achieve. Maybe you'll get all the hot women you want in the fantasy world and won't bother trying to form relationships with real life women any more, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything else to do in the real world. In fact most people could probably achieve far more in the world if so much of life didn't revolve around trying to attract and retain a suitable mate. I want to see mankind colonize the galaxy and ensure it's survival for the next few trillion years, I want to see the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy unraveled, I want the disease of aging to be cured and lifespans extended indefinitely, among many other things. And I can't do any of those things (for real) from a simulation.

Pretty sure almost every Canadian bank has options to pay no fees while you're under 18 and/or a student at high school/college. I certainly never paid any fees to my bank until I finished university. And of course if you are in the US, there are many banking options that do not charge fees for accounts and basic transactions, period.

They can use their parent's gadgets/accounts.

Using an app on their phone?

By accepting credit/debit cards?

I'm not a plane commuter so I don't fly on a regular basis. When I fly, it's for travel or very occasionally for a business trip. Overall, no more than 3-4 times per year on average. I think this is probably true for most people, they fly a few times a year but not more regularly than that. And whether the flight itself has been 1-2 hours or 4-5 hours or 14 hours, the overall process has always taken essentially all day in that you couldn't really do anything else productive that same day. Anyway, enough about my hate-on for flying, it's a bit off topic other than to illustrate that myself, and presumably other people with not too dissimilar experiences, would be up for trying an alternative.

Yes, hypothetically you could create such a thing and if one spent long enough in it one might "forget" that it isn't reality. Thinking about it in practice though, it seems likely that it would not be legal to program things so if you died in your simulation your physical self would be killed as well. Further, assuming that nothing was done to mess with your memory, the underlying fact that what you are experiencing is only a simulation would still be intellectually known to you even if it didn't "feel" like a simulation. While experiencing an immersive, realistic simulation where you can live out all your fantasies is very appealing and no doubt many people would spend some time in it, I think many people are driven by some sort of ambition to achieve something in the "real" world.

Hasn't this been answered enough times on this forum? cost of supporting immigrants lack of evidence to suggest that immigration really drives economic growth (all "evidence" is opinion only - even if it's an economist's opinion, it's still opinion). Economic growth means per-capita growth, not just the absolute size of the economy. the downward pressure on wages caused by an ever-abundant supply of cheap labour environmental damage due to the need to constantly expand cities and land use social/cultural problems of bringing in large numbers of immigrants from cultures with very different ideas of rights and values, faster than they can be assimilated

Indeed. Why should it even matter if Hillary had lesbian relationships? Or non-lesbian ones? Maybe her and Bill have an open relationship. At what point do people stop fantasizing about the oh-so-exciting sex lives of ~70 year olds? This whole election is so dumb. What are the top issues? Pussygate and email servers. Meanwhile we've heard barely a peep about the economy, foreign policy, or any issue of import. No wonder so much of the world is turning away from democracy and embracing the Chinese and Russian model of thinly veiled strongman rule.

If we had a transit system that could link the West Coast Megalopolis and the East Coast Megalopolis each into effectively one city with reasonable commute times across it that would be plenty of a market niche for a hyperloop or similar system even if it didn't serve coast-to-coast trips or international trips. That said, I'm sure we'll see a Bahrain/Qatar/UAE system, or perhaps something in China, long before anything is done in NA. Don't see why that would necessarily be a feature of the hyperloop. Is the whole rail network shut down every time there's a problem with one train?

I'll believe it when I see it. All I know is I've never flown anywhere where the flight didn't essentially take the whole day, from an early morning wake up to get ready to go to the airport to late evening when you're finally settled in at your final destination and starting to recover from the ordeal. Air travel also deals very poorly with real world complications. A medical emergency? Everyone on the flight is delayed by probably a full day. As for long lines... ever been to an airport? I think you underestimate the antipathy that a lot of people feel for air travel these days, and the ease with which any reasonable alternative could gain market share. I don't know if hyperloop is necessarily that alternative, or some other form of very high speed rail, or something else entirely, but build a system that lets people get from one major city to another at a speed comparable to air travel and it will certainly get used.

Any plane flight takes essentially all day. You have to be at the airport ~ 2 hours before your departure time, and you usually need to figure out some non-driving way to get there so add at least an extra hour of commute. Then it takes about an hour to get off the plane, pick up any checked bags, and get out of the airport. So you're looking at ~4 hours + the duration of your flight. Plus, you spend a ton of money and are crammed in in extreme discomfort and treated with disrespect. Honestly, anything that's within about a 10 hour driving distance (~1000-1300 km) makes much more sense to drive than to fly, for me at least. Also, if you look at the hyperloop concept, it is intended to be both faster than (in terms of actual moving speed, and certainly in terms of the time you have to dedicate to the trip) and cheaper than airplanes. Whether that can be achieved in practice is of course a different question.

Adding an interesting level of challenge, unpredictability, or lack of control to make it ideally engaging would be a relatively simple matter, presumably. The bigger issue I think is if the subject knows that what they are in is merely a simulation, or if they think it's the real world. I think for most people, if they know it's merely a simulation, they wouldn't want to spend their whole lives in it, probably just enough to enjoy being "surrounded by insanely beautiful members of the opposite sex that desire only to please you" every night. Of course, some people would get addicted and spend all their time there but it would be looked down on like computer game addicts are today.

Clearly. But those are different indicators than "he didn't outperform the index".

A lot of capital does just go into indexed funds. But the way numbers work is there is always gonna be an average, and a top half and a bottom half. Cars still need to be made, metals still need to be mined, oil still needs to be refined, etc, even though these businesses might be underperforming the index average over whatever time period. And sometimes the index average is driven by huge gains in a few outperforming companies, or huge losses in a few poor performers. As long as, accounting for the risk you take, you are exceeding the risk-free rate of return, you're doing alright.

This isn't a defense of Trump (I detest him) but this particular criticism is not well thought out. Only about half of businesses can outperform the stock market index, and the other half will necessarily under-perform the index, since by definition the performance of the index is the average of all the businesses it contains (which one would expect would also be similar to the average for privately held businesses). Many solid businesses have performed a few percent worse than the index.

Obviously the "system" we are discussing is ridiculous but I don't think I agree with this. I'd rather have gone to school for 8 years and become an expert in my field and do what I do now, even if I was getting paid the same as a person serving coffee, because what I do is much more interesting (to me at least) than serving coffee. I would imagine most brain surgeons (and doctors of any kind) feel the same way.

People care what Glenn Beck thinks?