European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1223

On January 17 2019 05:47 Nyxisto wrote:


That people marry people in their own socio-economical cohort because they have similar preferences isn't surprising and there's nothing wrong it it. The suggestions however that this is due to some genetic advantage or eternal wealth transfer is wrong, because it is a simple fact that there is no caste of intelligent super-humans, and that wealth is eroded over the course of only relatively few generations.

So, unless we're talking about a wealthy descendant of some merchant family in Venice, if two successful people meet today they likely do so because they're skilled and educated, not because they've inherited a great deal of intellect or money.

On January 17 2019 06:47 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

I didn't say it is suprising or that there is something wrong with it. But how nice of you to infer that.

Either way you admit that you are completely wrong. Which I was pointing out. Which for some reason you decided to deflect that I am making some sort of moral judgement, which I was not.

On January 17 2019 20:02 iamthedave wrote:
With the way this discussion is going I'm waiting for someone to bust out some old Randian Objectivism.

I think one of the quietest evils of Capitalism is that we're bred to believe acquiring wealth means being a good parent in and of itself, often replacing being an actual parent and raising your children.

Arguments about wealth and intelligence are inherently screwed up because wealthy people both have access to the best education and get the most opportunities to develop whatever intellectual limits they have. In addition rating intelligence isn't the easiest thing to do, and a lot of Trust Fund babies are about as smart and talented as the average rock.

You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I’m no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can’t even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc. You know what I’m talking about. In 1992, I was selling pillows made by my family’s business, Pacific Coast Feather Co., to retail stores across the country, and the Internet was a clunky novelty to which one hooked up with a loud squawk at 300 baud. But I saw pretty quickly, even back then, that many of my customers, the big department store chains, were already doomed. I knew that as soon as the Internet became fast and trustworthy enough—and that time wasn’t far off—people were going to shop online like crazy. Goodbye, Caldor. And Filene’s. And Borders. And on and on.

Realizing that, seeing over the horizon a little faster than the next guy, was the strategic part of my success. The lucky part was that I had two friends, both immensely talented, who also saw a lot of potential in the web. One was a guy you’ve probably never heard of named Jeff Tauber, and the other was a fellow named Jeff Bezos. I was so excited by the potential of the web that I told both Jeffs that I wanted to invest in whatever they launched, big time. It just happened that the second Jeff—Bezos—called me back first to take up my investment offer. So I helped underwrite his tiny start-up bookseller. The other Jeff started a web department store called Cybershop, but at a time when trust in Internet sales was still low, it was too early for his high-end online idea; people just weren’t yet ready to buy expensive goods without personally checking them out (unlike a basic commodity like books, which don’t vary in quality—Bezos’ great insight). Cybershop didn’t make it, just another dot-com bust. Amazon did somewhat better. Now I own a very large yacht.

But let’s speak frankly to each other. I’m not the smartest guy you’ve ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I’m not technical at all—I can’t write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?

I see pitchforks.

At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country—the 99.99 percent—is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.

But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

According to the EUIPO decision, McDonald’s submitted three affidavits which detailed McDonald’s historical Big Mac sales figures; menus listing the Big Mac; brochures and even sandwich packaging—one each from England, Germany, and France; screenshots of local McDonald’s websites in 18 countries across the EU “identifying … Big Mac sandwiches, some of which state that they are sandwiches made of beef meat.”; and a printout of the McDonald’s Wikipedia entry with its rich history of the chain’s presence in Europe—and the Big Macs it sold there.

The EUIPO’s response to McDonald’s evidence is, frankly, hilarious. To the detailed affidavits and websites that set out the Big Mac’s availability, trademark examiners brushed them off, essentially stating "Of course you would say that! You’re trying to enforce a trademark!"

Does that seem like an exaggeration? The ruling expressly says affidavits from the parties are “generally given less weight than independent evidence” and “all of the remaining evidence”—the websites, brochures, and sandwich packaging samples—“originates from [McDonald’s] itself.” And so the sales figures submitted in sworn testimony, the McDonald’s sandwich boxes that you know examiners had seen before on their own trays, and the screenshot of a French menu with Le Big Mac sandwich au boeuf were all so lacking in persuasiveness and credibility that the only thing McDonald’s had left was … Wikipedia. And if the EUIPO doesn’t trust sworn testimony from a trademark-holder, you can imagine what they said about Wikipedia.

On January 24 2019 03:05 Plansix wrote:
Damn. Fascism is a hell of a drug kids. Learn to see it coming before it too takes over your police force and they say laws get in the way of them doing the will of the people.

On January 24 2019 06:23 GreenHorizons wrote:


This is ironic coming from the US in the era of Trump.

On January 24 2019 06:36 Plansix wrote:

Friends don't let friends engage in fascism.

On January 24 2019 06:41 GreenHorizons wrote:


Friendship is a two-way street and if that's a responsibility of a friend our friends (should they exist) have failed.

On January 24 2019 15:17 GreenHorizons wrote:
How did you guys pull away that I was blaming Trump on Europe?

I was pointing out the irony in the US warning Europe about rising fascism while we're actively endorsing unashamed fascists around the world.