Since when is IE the leading browser in international politics!?



  • @Gaska said:

    What about 2010s?

    I haven't read about that myself, so I can't vouch for it. I've read several books about the mid-90s famines. Which, BTW, were an indirect result of the post-Communist Russian government saying, "look, NK, even we're getting sick of your shit, k?" and canning most of their trade.

    One in particular was about a doctor in NK who defected to China to find out that:

    1. Even people in rural China had enough money to feed their dogs meat (she hadn't seen meat in like 5 years), and

    2. Her medical training was all 25 years out-of-date, and it was impossible for her to get a medical certificate in any other country without basically starting her entire education from scratch


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Her medical training was all 25 years out-of-date, and it was impossible for her to get a medical certificate in any other country without basically starting her entire education from scratch

    I've read stories by doctors who defected who talked about how part of their normal job working at a hospital was to go out into the woods to forage for medicinal herbs.


  • Banned

    @blakeyrat said:

    I haven't read about that myself, so I can't vouch for it. I've read several books about the mid-90s famines. Which, BTW, were an indirect result of the post-Communist Russian government saying, "look, NK, even we're getting sick of your shit, k?" and canning most of their trade.

    That sounds reasonable. But I doubt the situation hasnt improved since fifteen years ago at least a little (ie. to a point where it's more common to have enough food than not).

    @blakeyrat said:

    Even people in rural China had enough money to feed their dogs meat (she hadn't seen meat in like 5 years)

    Weird; that contradicts everything people in Poland know about China.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Her medical training was all 25 years out-of-date, and it was impossible for her to get a medical certificate in any other country without basically starting her entire education from scratch

    Doesn't surprise me - the technology always advances the most in rich countries that don't put lion's share of people's money in military.

    @boomzilla said:

    I've read stories by doctors who defected who talked about how part of their normal job working at a hospital was to go out into the woods to forage for medicinal herbs.

    Which, considering how good our grandmothers were in curing common illnesses using homebrew stuff, sound very reasonable in a country where Bayer etc. have no market presence.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Gaska said:

    Which, considering how good our grandmothers were in curing common illnesses using homebrew stuff, sound very reasonable in a country where Bayer etc. have no market presence.

    How good were they? Most things clear up on their own. But "died of pneumonia" used to be a popular way to go.

    @Gaska said:

    Doesn't surprise me - the technology always advances the most in rich countries that don't put lion's share of people's money in military.

    Is there any actual rich country that does this?



  • @boomzilla said:

    Is there any actual rich country that does this?

    No.

    EDIT: US listed as 3.8% of GDP for 2013, others have higher but none that I'd call rich.


  • BINNED

    @boomzilla said:

    Is there any actual rich country that does this?

    We're spending a lot more per capita on health care. What we're getting for the money is a question for another flamewar thread.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_(PPP)_per_capita


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @antiquarian said:

    We're spending a lot more per capita on health care

    Yeah. I knew we didn't do it. And I know that we're far and away the biggest military spender. So the assertion seemed nonsensical.

    @locallunatic said:

    US listed as 3.8% of GDP for 2013, others have higher but none that I'd call rich.

    You have the petro dollars of the middle east, but yeah, I wouldn't call those countries rich. Israel has obvious security issues that (to me) justify spending 5.6%, but I think they're pretty advanced in medical technology and training, or at least not obviously backward.

    Maybe things just look different from Poland.



  • @Gaska said:

    Exactly - we don't know. But we know they're among the ten countries that we know they're capable of producing nuclear weapons.

    Little Boy, the gun-type nuke that was dropped on Hiroshima, was so simple and so likely to work that they didn't even test it. Any county that can enrich Uranium can make one.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Yes, the device is simple. It's getting access to the enriched uranium that's very difficult.


  • Banned

    @boomzilla said:

    Is there any actual rich country that does this?

    USA spends about 25% of its national budget on military, and only about 30% of people's money end up in national treasury. This is hardly a lion's share. Compare it with USSR, which spent 100% of budget on military,* and because communism, the treasury had 100% of people's money. This is what I call big.

    BTW, I consider GDP a bullshit measure.

    * source: http://fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/agency/mo-budget.htm


  • Banned

    @boomzilla said:

    Yes, the device is simple. It's getting access to the enriched uranium that's very difficult.

    Mostly because current nuclear superpowers won't let you.



  • @Gaska said:

    USSR

    Which would never have been considered a rich country due to how badly things were run.

    EDIT: well lots of reasons, but that is one of them


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Gaska said:

    BTW, I consider GDP a bullshit measure.

    This bothers me not at all.

    @Gaska said:

    USA spends about 25% of its national budget on military, and only about 30% of people's money end up in national treasury.

    Current estimates are about 3.3% of GDP. The 25% figure you give seems about right but the 30% is not.

    @Gaska said:

    This is hardly a lion's share.

    We agree on the end result, however.

    @Gaska said:

    Compare it with USSR

    I would not have rated the USSR as a rich country, but I agree that they spent a lot of their money on the military.

    @Gaska said:

    Mostly because current nuclear superpowers won't let you.

    Yes. It's also pretty damn expensive. Of course, no one is building gun assembly weapons, so things are a bit more complicated, but even so, stuff is pretty easy to build generally. What's difficult is getting reliable weapons that are small enough to put on a missile. That takes testing.



  • To second Gaska, enriching Uranium isn't all that difficult for a country. However, it's really hard to do without anyone noticing (we're really good at looking for this). And when someone notices, they generally point guns at you. NK is likely doing this with a settlement as an end game.

    So, it's not a difficulty problem, it's a political problem.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Jaime said:

    So, it's not a difficulty problem, it's a political problem.

    We all agree on that. Though it is expensive, which for a country is just another political problem (guns vs butter).


  • Banned

    @locallunatic said:

    Which would never have been considered a rich country due to how badly things were run.

    Didn't stop them from effectively conquering quarter of the world.

    @boomzilla said:

    Current estimates are about 3.3% of GDP. The 25% figure you give seems about right but the 30% is not.

    You seem to confuse GDP with actual money. I got the 25% from here and 30% from here.

    @boomzilla said:

    We agree on the end result, however.

    Except the end result wasn't conclusion but premise, so agreeing on it means nothing.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Gaska said:

    You seem to confuse GDP with actual money.

    I'm only confused about what you're trying to tell me.

    @Gaska said:

    I got the 25% from here and 30% from here.

    Your numbers are off, because Tax Freedom Day is for all taxes. And you only looked at Federal spending. But a lot of that gets borrowed every year, so you're even farther off than that.

    @Gaska said:

    Except the end result wasn't conclusion but premise, so agreeing on it means nothing.

    Now you're just confusing yourself.


  • BINNED

    @Gaska said:

    Weird; that contradicts everything people in Poland know about China.

    Blame it on propaganda


  • Banned

    @boomzilla said:

    Your numbers are off, because Tax Freedom Day is for all taxes.

    That's the point?

    @boomzilla said:

    And you only looked at Federal spending. But a lot of that gets borrowed every year, so you're even farther off than that.

    Yeah, I guess I'd need to account for that, but I'm not sure in which way. Does it mean less money? More money? Anyway, the point is, USA spends about 10% country's money on military, whereas USSR spent 100%.

    @Luhmann said:

    Blame it on propaganda

    I do.


  • Java Dev

    You can't compare military expenditure as a percentage of national government spending between countries. The reason for this is that the balance between federal, state, and local government expenditure, as well as which essential services are offered by commercial entities, varies wildly between countries. However military is (probably, mostly,) handled by the highest level of government.



  • @Gaska said:

    I mean, if we were to believe what our propaganda says about their propaganda.

    And our propaganda is really good at discrediting NK. For all we know, they might be the best country on Earth, with hovercrafts and shit, and we're led to believe they live on the streets and feed with dirt.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Gaska said:

    USA spends about 10% country's money

    Only if you have some weird definition of "money." Which I geuss you do.

    @Gaska said:

    That's the point?

    OK, so now we're in agreement that you were wrong?


  • Banned

    @boomzilla said:

    Only if you have some weird definition of "money." Which I geuss you do.

    My definition of money is actual bucks earned by people in given year. I think it's much better metric than GDP, which is about nominal value of transactions - say, if I traded my trillion dollar dog for your two cats, $500,000,000,000 each, i would have just two cats and you would have just a dog, but GDP would skyrocket.

    @boomzilla said:

    OK, so now we're in agreement that you were wrong?

    Wrong about what?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Gaska said:

    My definition of money is actual bucks earned by people in given year.

    Then you should at least use that. But you didn't. Either way, we come to the same conclusion regarding the US and "lion's share spent on the military."

    @Gaska said:

    Wrong about what?

    You were using Federal spending vs all taxes. And you agreed with that, which means that your calculations didn't make much sense. Not to mention that you left a lot of stuff out.



  • @Gaska said:

    if I traded my trillion dollar dog for your two cats, $500,000,000,000 each,

    I'll sell you my cat for a tenth of that. Call me.


    Also Discourse's reaction time is well over a minute right now. GOOD THING WE FIXED ALL THE PROBLEMS!


  • Java Dev

    @blakeyrat said:

    I'll sell you my cat for a tenth of that. Call me.

    I've got 2 $25,000,000,000 bricks I'm willing to trade.


  • Banned

    @boomzilla said:

    Then you should at least use that. But you didn't.

    Is total tax something different than sum of money gathered through taxation of people?

    @boomzilla said:

    Either way, we come to the same conclusion regarding the US and "lion's share spent on the military."

    I don't know about your conclusion, but my conclusion is that USA isn't spending enough money on guns to hurt civil industry.

    @blakeyrat said:

    I'll sell you my cat for a tenth of that. Call me.

    Which part of dog you want?


  • Fake News

    @Gaska said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    I'll sell you my cat for a tenth of that. Call me.

    Which part of dog you want?

    I would recommend the nose, if only to make a killer joke.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    GOOD THING WE FIXED ALL THE PROBLEMS!

    Here's a match for your strawman.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Gaska said:

    Is total tax something different than sum of money gathered through taxation of people?

    No. But using that as a denominator vs Federal spending is wrong for multiple reasons.

    @Gaska said:

    I don't know about your conclusion, but my conclusion is that USA isn't spending enough money on guns to hurt civil industry.

    Yes. That's what we agree on.


  • Banned

    @boomzilla said:

    No. But using that as a denominator vs Federal spending is wrong for multiple reasons.

    Not versus - together with. Percentage of money took from people X percentage of money put in military = percentage of people's money spent on military. I know it's a rough estimate, but it can't be that wrong.



  • @Gaska said:

    @boomzilla said:
    No. But using that as a denominator vs Federal spending is wrong for multiple reasons.

    Not versus - together with. Percentage of money took from people X percentage of money put in military = percentage of people's money spent on military. I know it's a rough estimate, but it can't be that wrong.

    First, sorry for coming in so late.

    Anyway, I think I understand what is going on here. @Gaska, you made the mistake of assuming that all money collected through taxation (your 30% figure) goes to the federal government. This is an incorrect assumption because the United States has multiple semi-autonomous levels of government. That 30% figure gets split between:

    • municipal government (city/town/village/etc. based on where you live)
    • county government
    • state government
    • federal government

    Each of these governments maintains it's own treasuries and taxes. That's where you messed up. That's what @boomzilla meant when he said

    @boomzilla said:

    Tax Freedom Day is for all taxes

    So yes, because of this, your estimate will be fairly far off.


  • Banned

    I see. Yeah, seems like I overestimated by a large margin. Which reinforces my original point of USA spending not that much on guns even more.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Gaska said:

    Which reinforces my original point of USA spending not that much on guns even more.

    Yep. On that we agree.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    ...it just hit me.

    Political discussions among laypeople is basically the ultimate form of bikeshedding.


  • Banned

    You must have never seen mobile OS wars between tech noobs.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    Fair. "Ultimate" may have been hyperbole.


  • Banned

    "Ultimate" is always a hyperbole.

    A certain someone should copy the line above and paste is somewhere else so we can make it into a law.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Gaska said:

    "Ultimate" is always a hyperbole.

    But is it the ultimate hyperbole?


  • Banned

    It could be, if it was a hyperbole at all.


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