Spawn, wouldn't it be easier served by reducing the humanitarian range for 1/12 to 1/3 than to rebalance military and land values? If built land is NW$800, 20k land is NW$16m and can hit over NW$1.3m or 1.7k land.

Steeps, while there is 10,148k total land in alliance, there is only 187k land for untags and non-clans (2025/FBI). Let's look at the distribution profile. Generally, you can't hit someone thinner than you and come out ahead in the exchange.

297 Countries <10k = 1829k
354 Countries 10k-20k = 5348k
96 Countries 20k-25k = 1934k (2971k - 129@20k+)
18 Countries 25k-30k = 482k (1037k - 33@25k+)
9 Countries 30k-35k = 286k (555k - 15@30k+)
6 Countries 35k+ = 268k

Of the 6 over 35k land, one is an MDer who farmed iMag; three are LaF who farmed 2025; one is an EVO who has 3 hits on PDM and 2 on Rage unretaled; and one is an EVO who netting 8k land in a 3 hit exchange with PDM.

To compete with these exchanges and exceptional circumstances, the game is evolving towards all-defence/ex or jet-heavy/low-defence land trading. 354 people can't gain 1k land a day each by bottom feeding or exploring. A shift to a layered DR system might balance this somewhat, giving people 1-2 good hit a day.

Any LG on an alliance should be retalled 95%+ successfully. A LG:Retal exchange sees CS, building, military, and oil costs on both sides that reduce the relative value of the ghost acres produced. These costs often don't stack up against farming past 13+ DR. So the rational options are to farm or exchange land with min losses.

The politics of land concentrating in a few tags is in part because EVO/LaF offer better tag protection as they threaten to farm/kill anyone that doesn't comply with their wishes. So you either pact out or go a step farther trade land with them. This will evolve in a network of friendly-exchanges possibly in the future as alliances realise the benefits of hitting, or also possibly stir some wars around LGing an attacker before a retal could be taken. However, if you are exchanging hits with another alliance for mutual benefit, at that point why not just hit internally?

I agree with your comment about bringing a challenge to netting. I'm just suggesting ways to balance the game and open the variety of successful playing patterns.

Most of them have been identified as boating or drowning victims, who had been missing for years. It's not uncommon for body parts to dismember as the flesh rots. There has been a higher number of it occuring in BC due to the strong glacial river basin and tidal action in the Fraser River Valley. It is known to happen in similar geographic areas such as New Zealand and Madagascar.

Canadian serial killers feed their victims to pigs and humans, not the fishs.

I would hope the US was able to retify the wage gap in the next 1000 years, so you wouldn't get your selective patterning. However, most people take too simiplistic/straightforward view of evolution. We aren't one uniform blob of code, as individuals, our cells vary in both expression and content. We can receive genetic infusions sideways via virus and bacteria. Recessive/malform gene expressions add heartiness to the species and allows for a stronger genetic match in the future. For example, in einkorn wheat, 'a winter wheat', the genes for cold resistance were introduced via a plant that had substandard yield.

I would set the rise in modern medicine back futher than antibotics (1908) to the discovery of bacteria in 1676. That started modern hygene and world life expectancy has skyrocketed since then from 25-30 to 67. There are 15 countries with a life expenctancy over 80 and 127 countries over 67, 151 over 60, and 18 under 50. Africa drags the average down still due to lack of basically everything we take for granted (peace, utilities, etc).

The US has a life expentency for whites/blacks/all Americans has been 72/64/71 in 1970, 74/68/74 in 1980, 76/69/75 in 1990, 77/71/77 in 2000, and 79/74/78 in 2010. Without exogamy, the prevalence of sickle-cell anemina and STDs in the African American community won't allow their 'better parts' to survive and 'breed quality'. Over 1000 years, if present conditions remained (under replacement birth rate, higher minority morality rates, high Latin and Asian migration), you might see the demographic group disappear entirely.

If you want to be racist, you are better off doing it by haplogroups than skin tones or nationality. For example, Watertowers ascertation that Sweden can be socialist because of their good genes, makes me wonder why Bosnia and Herzegovina, which also have a predominance of Haplogroup I (http://en.wikipedia.org/...on_Haplogroup_I_Y-DNA.svg), does not also have the same luxuries. It may have more to do with the fact of not infighting extensively allows a nation to find stability and prosperity.

Having played/worked with both Deity and Dragon, Dragon is more systematic and through than Deity. As for war countries, they differed on a preference between Dicts and Tyrs.

For the best waller, I'm going to go off the board so far for Herc from Armageddon/Unknown.

Watertowers, your genetic arguements hold no merit. If we had identified a lazy gene or DNA subset, you might have a bit of ground to stand on, but there is no proof for your statements. On the other side, there had been much research showing socio-economic impacts on individuals regardless of visible minority.

Are you suggesting current day Americans are genetically inferior to prior ones? Or are US immigrants lowering the bar? Because the US doesn't have a replacement population birthrate, so the poor can't possible be breeding the nation lazy.

You need only look to Quebec with the Black and Irish populations for ethic/lingistic minorities to even out. Canada doesn't suffer the same economic segregation along race lines as the US; instead Canada stratifies by length of citizenship.

- you remember kill runs before mIRC.
- you remember "Earth Days".
- you remember when The RoCKFamily site became public as GT.
- you had an account on E2HQ
- you have a grudge against an alliance that no longer plays on alliance server

Not to be defending dagga, but this thread was SOL troll bait, what did you expect?

So when is Sanct ceasefiring? SOL has 3 countries older than 2 weeks old.

Dibs isn't stupid, he's just trolling like dagga.

Don't feed the trolls.

I just sold some jets.

I didn't mean to suggest making all-x countries non-competitive, only to provide more of a random element to the game. If they just sat there and generated land, it would be worse than nothing.

Rockman, if you want to devote your time to killing random countries, that adds to the variety of game play. Would LaF or other netting clans step in to protect what they treat as their farmland?

Why is preferable to bottom feed the same player/country 8-13 times than hitting at a target unsure if it's a human or robot? The lack of targets already favours time input or lucky timing over skill in finding good targets.

Gaining land is key to the game. Currently, it is generated only by exploring (diminishing by natural decay with size) and ghost acres (growing linearly with size). I'm suggesting the game create 1 automated country for every player country created. A few logic cases would be enough to decide to explore, build, attack, cash, tech, or store turns.

I need to double check these numbers, but in Alliance so far this reset, there have been 46 people to grab 10k land or more, and 316 people who grabbed 1k or more. With 120 untagged countries, there isn't enough to go around, so everyone is farmed into deep DRs because there are not other marginally better targets out there and, after 10k land, exploring is also marginal. As a result, people move on to the next marginal task of land trading for ghost acres.

With 800-1200 untagged countries, there would be enough targets for each current attacker to have 5-10 hits a day without reduced returns. With 800-1200 untagged countries that will retal and make random LGs on landfat countries regardless of tag protect, all-explorers will need more than token defense and plan for interruptions rather than being a rare exception.

The main grudge against multies is how they were used and benefitted one side over another. If they were server-side ran countries, they could help liven things up for those in tags and take some of the attack pressure off real people who choose to play untagged.

Is herpes the black disease like AIDS is the gay disease?

1 in 5 women have herpes
1 in 2 black women have herpes
1 in 3 black men have herpes
1 in 8 men have herpes

I'd say Earth is more like HPV than HSV or HIV. You hang out with someone, thinking your safe with a condom, then wham a nice crop of warts. They might go away for awhile, but most everyone has had them at least once (75% of Americans). If you don't get it treated soon enough, it becomes a cancer on your life.

blid, let's turn the situation around. Someone twice your NW grabs you, but you have the stock to buy up enough jets to make him sorry, because he doesn't have much defense either. You make a great retalitory hit, and then the bugger comes back and hits you again because you did a better job hitting back then hit did hitting. What would your reaction be? To say, "ya, he's right, I am still ahead"? Or to make the wise ass pay for thinking he can push you around?

Last reset, I posted my country number in IRC and two people (#42 and #43) pelted me with missiles. Just because the first person found a likely missile dump the second person followed the news. If you want to prove multies, I'd expect more proof than being missiled twice by a country.

Country name and number are not as important as rank, networth, and land. With 10-30 ingame searches you can have a list of every country on the server. If you make it too hard to find targets, you might as well just take away hitting/spying all together.

An alternative solution is to limit the effects of teamwork, such as giving everyone a full scores list that also shows NW/land changes and last time seen gaining land.

Country A = Wrath of a Stoner (#462) (iMagNum)
Country B = Running Around Scared (#109) (MONSTERS)
Country C = Unforgiven Polar Bear (#277) (iMagNum)

It was 47 hours between the hits by countries A and C and 30 hours between country B's retal and country C's hit. The threat was started by an irate iMag player, not a Monster. There are no other hit combinations on the server in the timeframe just prior to this thread that fit the above details.

It'll be interesting to see who backs down.

I was just playing turns on Express, and the idea struck me: what if you varied time to market by the length of time on the market? So a 72h market stay would take the normal 4-5 hours, while a 1h market stay might take only 4-8 minutes.

TravelTime = BaseTravelRate * (2 - Stay/72) * LuckFactor

I like this suggestion in theory, but if a tag could gain 100% of the land of a country by killing it, things would be decidely less friendly. Why LG through all unit types when you can a a KR against only turrets or troops?

I think this would just encourage gangbanging/dogpiling as fast, uneven wars allow the victors to fully leverage the resources of the vanquished. EVO/LaF/PDM/SoL could team up and kill a 50-member tag every day or two. So the result would be continual server wars or at least David vs Goliath competitions.

Isolationism would work, if the US' problems were no endemic to the economy structure. If you aren't borrowing money from the world, there is no liquidity in the US market. Without an influx of annual immigrants, the US has a falling natural population, so no new housing starts. Without restocking the labour force, the retiring baby boomers will decimate the experience and versitity of the labour pool. The USA's greatness has always been as a bastion of hope and liberty for the underdeveloped world. If it cuts itself off from the world, it's just a bunch of Americans dreaming of how things used to be.

I agree we need to stop burning oil, as it's wasteful of a resource needed for cheap plastics and other polymers. However, the world's reserves (proven and possible) are much deeper than the USA's and we have about 300 years at current consumption rates. That combined with the hopeful strides they are making towards synthetic oil produced by E. Coli bacteria that should be at the mass-production stage in the next 50-100 years. If we have a breakthrough like that, oil will be a renewable resource and the US will have the chokehold on it's price point.

As for interest exceeding GDP, there is very little chance of that in our lifetimes. Let's look at some of the deepest leveraged nations in the world: Luxembourg and Ireland.
Luxembourg has the highest per capita GDP (~$86k) in the world and the highest debt per capita in the world (~$3.8m). There interest payments have drifted between 40 and 65% of revenue spending. Irelands debt is 11x it's GDP and their interest payments have dropped from 6% to 2% of revenue.
Finally, the USA's current interest outlay is around 6.5% of outlays or 10% of revenues. Canada's for comparision is around 15% of outlays.

The buck stops here. We will be the generation to clean up the world's mess.

Sorry, grumpy. I've gotten a photo radar ticket in Alberta and a couple speed camera tickets in the UK, but no red light tickets. I tend to drive around red light cameras, but if I do pass through, I'll go if it's a fresh yellow, or I saw a green countdown timer for pedestrians, so I knew the timing. I've screached my tires once stopping for the red before the line.

cartoon says " "
or you say lar~~

Oceana, a 35% tax burden would not devalue the currency significantly. Look at some of the highest taxed countries in the world: Denmark, Germany, Sweden, UK. Devaluation is in the US' favour anyway.

Terror, the US does not have the resources exploited necessary to forgo trade without drastic alteration of the American lifestyle. The US consumes 18.7 million barrels of oil per day and produces 7.8 million barrels of oil per day. It would take a decade to bridge that gap, if they started today. Even then, the US only has 21 billion barrels proved resource and 137 billion barrels probably resource, which equates to 3 and 20 years of current consumption rates. Take on shale oil, and you might have 30 years worth of supply left at current rates. Not really a long-term plan.

As for sudden devalution, it wouldn't cure the US' woes either. You might erase the 14 billion existing debt, but you would spike the price of oil and gold (approximately by 400% as there is ~3 trillion US cash in circulation) and drive up the cost of critical imports. The $10-14 trillion in new debt expected over the next decade would balloon (those 3.6 billion barrels of oil imported per year), and by 2030 you'd still have $25-30 trillion in debt as currently forecasted, only all American assets would be significantly devalued.

The US has had a policy of currency devaluation for the last 20 years since Alan Greenspan. Rather than shocking the system into complete disarray, they have moved slowly and consistantly down against the world basket. China, India, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and the EU, all of the US' largest trading partners, all have exchange rates 20-45% more favourable for the US since 1990.

You guy them on credit then?

This is definately landtrading as it's only a specific subset of countries that are inter-hitting. There are specific rules as who can be hit, how frequently they can hit, and who can retal. If it were landgrabbing, any country in the tag could retal. The only difference between this and intratag grabbing is there are multiple tags involved.

That said, I don't see anything wrong with getting land anyway you can.

Crazy delusional people hate themselves too.

Maybe the game has changed, but you could catch up to 4-5k land if you were a week behind in Earth:2025 by land grabbing instead of mass exploring.

Sorry, you are right about resource decay being a non-factor for MBR, I confused the two somewhere along the line.

It's not a new aspect of strategy assuming people are going to try bad combinations. They were off-the-cuff remarks, not simulated strategies. I'll leave you to your suggestion.

There are 50m American seniors with $16k in spending per capita. Defense spending is 25% of the 3.7 trillion US outlay. Debt interest payments are 6.5%. Even if you drop the $815b in SS payments to seniors, there is still $492b in medical coverage for senior that will just balloon, unless you suggest killing off America's retirees. Even without that you are $600b short of a balanced budget and no where near reducing the debt.

I would introduce a 5% goods and servicing sales tax for debt reduction (legistated to reduce the net national debt, maximum 50% used to make regular interest/debt rollover payments).

I would push for a fully integrated NATO armed forces with each country mandated to 5% government outlay to be in the defense sector. I would slash the head count of the military and invest in mechanisation, keeping only the elite specialists. A few examples: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...happens-turn-guns-us.html

I would raise the retirement age 1 year every 2, reaching 70 in 2020. Increasing payments into the system by age (say +0.4% for every decade under 70), would dull the shock of the aging population and give the economy time to grow in relative size to outlays.

I'd slash other various discretionary spending for a total of 30% reduction ($1.2 trillion) and then do a +15% across the board tax increase (so 5% income tax becomes 5.75%) for $330b and a balanced budget at $2.5 trillion.

Klown, sorry, I'll restrain myself to due agrogance. You are correct, I confused Ukraine and Poland. I was merely trying to point out some of the dicotomies of relgious morals, so I stuck to the cliches. If you prefer 2 Chronicles 25:12 "The army of Judah also captured ten thousand men alive, took them to the top of a cliff and threw them down so that all were dashed to pieces" can be substituted for "an eye for an eye". I was a practicing Christian until 2008, so I do know a fair amount about the religion. People can use religion to justify bad actions as well as good actions. Therefore, religion directly should not be the basis for our moral governance, but the underlying concepts of brotherly equality and acceptance (or whatever else you want to take as the core precept).

Angel - the US is 76% Christian, pretty well the same composition as Europe. I gave you the link to a very recent natural disaster so you could find personal accounts linked to it. People taking their own boats out in Nashville didn't make the international news either, but it doesn't reduce the impact of their efforts. Europe and America are cut from the same cloth. Neither has superior moral fortitude or corruption. Both generally have populations that care for the wellfare of those around them. I believe the people determine the character of the government. A caring population will support a government that quickly and effectively intervenes after a natural or military dissaster. An uncaring population will vote out such a government in favour of a more cost-limiting group.

I wasn't putting the effort to be familiar with regulations before criticizing solely on you or the Republic Party. The need to supplement the replacement of redundant regulations is from the fact two regulations never exactly cover the same area. If you repeal one or the other, you may have a gap that requires supplement efforts to cover up. My main point is that "regulations are bad" is just talk, find the bad regulations and do something about that specific regulation, instead of complaining on a general level that won't affect any change.

Closing tax loopholes is accepted by most everyone except Tea Party Republicans as a good idea. Boehner admitted as much when the main deficit deal fell apart, he couldn't control the party's vote. My 30% for all was after you've eliminated all tax subsidies and tax exemptions. My own ideal tax form would be three bands: 0-50k @ 1%, 50k-200k @ 20%, 200k+ @ 45%. This would lower the tax burden for the majority of Americans, while increasing tax revenues by 5-10%. I would similarly adjust corporate taxes, where an operational loss would offset some taxes while profit margins are taxed at 33%. However, the corporate side would need a world-wide format acceptance or else they will just relocate to the less taxed nation in the world.

Alter_Ego - the fact Tea Party Republicans will only discuss half of the debate to balance the budget means the US will be stuck in a deficit position for at least the next decade and a half, doubling the national debt. Unless you are willing to meet the otherside halfway, no compromise to solve the mess will occur.

[quote poster=QiXiongMao; 11759; 206459]You seem to believe that decline is only measured in succession of state/provinces or breaking up.

Decline to me would be just as the word implies.[/QUOTE]Yes, the world decline immplies itself. However, martian's post did not mention decline, and the thread is about "country population size and stability". I was speaking to the stability of the national identities beyond attachment to specific economic policies or government structures.

Why shouldn't Japan be on a list of the 10 most populous countries in the world?

Deerhunter - if the US ever again gets into a real war, it will be nuked. No one wins with nuclear armageddon. The US's largest problem is a population unwilling to face the reality of what is necessary to fix their society: more taxes and less entitlements.

Angel - if you can convince the majority of people in 38 states that the USA is a bad idea, then yes, it's a possibility. The 27th amendment to the US Constitution took 74k days to be ratified. While I'm not suggesting that's typical, it is a drawn out process. It is within the realm of possibilities, but it has two chances of success: fat and slim. There are many federal properties (Fort Knox, Pentagon, Area 51) that would be hard to distribute between states peacefully.

There have been a number of earthquakes in the last 24 hours. Colorado had some last night as well as a major one on the seabed near Indonesia.

So if I ran an 8-day bonus-start up, I could convert 640-turns into -100% building costs? Then catch-up by land-trading with a partner? As a MBR, I could exchange 2-3 days of turns for -100% resource decay? The ability is completely overwhelming at this price point, if you had to convert 4 turns for 1 bonus point, it would keep it in proportion, but at that level, do you want to be buying bonus points?

Mehul tried having a premium service on Earth with platnium accounts. They did not significant alter the revenue of earth, only it gave him 10-15 years of removed-ad revenue up front. If you mix cash-payment bonuses in with everyone one else, they will dominate the game and drive non-paying players away. If you have a cash-payer only game (like Earth Council server was), you limit the size of the game even further. Would you pay for a top 10 finish on a server with 40 people?

So you live your life attempting to restore America to greatness? If not, probably those before you didn't either. I think your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents worked hard to make a better life for themselves and their children. I find it very unfortunate that you think the location of your birth gives you more right to the world's resources.

The US can afford $3 billion a year to coroporate jet owners, but can't afford to provide basic human care? If priorities and atitudes changed, then the US could afford to give medical care and education to everyone within the nation. Canada does it. Britian does it. If fact 32 of 33 developed nations of the world have universal health care, I wonder which is the only developed nation on Earth that can't afford it.

These people are part of your economy for better or worse, so why not make it for the better for everyone?

Creberus, you seem to be backtracking on the quality of policemanship. Let's look at some of the pirates in Florida:

http://florida.arrests.org/...Kent_Brother_5682621/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/...illiam_Evans_5608775/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/.../Frank_Dulak_5363338/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/...wame_Johnson_5283738/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/...eryl_Agerton_5207761/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/.../Mark_Castle_1737584/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/...rt_Gutierrez_4043574/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/...l_Uptagrafft_5122990/?d=1

A few neck braces and masks not removed:
http://florida.arrests.org/.../Parker_Hunt_4659322/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/...ichael_Kelly_2772495/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/...bin_Mckinzie_5393314/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/...amuel_Stacey_5421198/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/.../Shawn_Smith_1718870/?d=1

If police work is not flawless, which no one is, then there will always be a margin of error in the system.

Try an ingame message in Russia to all the countries.

So what about immigrant children who grow up in the US? You prefer to employ an American-born over foriegn-born? Don't you see the preference is completely arbirary? Why should you favour someone born in Alaska over the Yukon? Hawaii over Japan?

Most illegal immigrants have tried offical routes and either are still in the bogged down system or were rejected on some basis. The whole concept that they should be considered illegal is barbaric and counter-productive. The fiscal point being the failure to pay taxes and the humanitarian point being the denial of medial services. But maybe, I'm just biased as I was an illegal Canadian immigrant in America with my family for 6 years. I couldn't get a driver's license when I turned 16. The discrimination is arbrary and limits the full potential of the US population.

Look at the cargo ship of Sri Lankans that landed in BC last year. Many of them had immigration applications that were part of an 8 year backlog. The people organising such things such be stopped and punished, but the human beings in the cargo container just wanted the same opertunity to live and work in peace that you cherish or take of granted.

On a counter note, I think immigration in general is counter-productive. The most cost effective solution is to inject massive foriegn investment into development of the third world instead of doing the same works in countries with higher labour and material costs. We should be exporting our knowledge base and pushing the fronters of global access. Each domestic population should seek to stablize, then the only growth in the global economy will be from a rise in the mean standard of living.

It's interesting to note the difference in mix between US immigration and Canadian or Austrilian immigration. In Canada, it's a mix of family(35%), high-skilled labour(50%), and aslum (15%). Most Canadian-bred Canadian families only go back 6 generations to colonization, so only the myopic ones see the more recent newcomers as a different class of citizens.

I'm almost of the same page as Terror, but a person does not lose their right until (and in some case, even when) they are convicted.
A criminal still has the right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment, for example.

Which of these mug shots are more objectionable:
http://florida.arrests.org/...s/Ronald_Fox_5456774/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/.../Ronald_Wade_5376879/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/...leur_Mohamed_5650561/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/..._Kirkpatrick_5543023/?d=1
http://florida.arrests.org/.../Chase_White_5374098/?d=1

If those are all valid mug shots, why are you complaining about additional information in the form of a clean mug shot being obtainable when due cause is shown? Is the fact that due cause of suspicious is necessary that will slow the "investigation"?

Law enforcement agencies err on the side of over-emprisonment on the basis of "let the courts sort them out". Judicial oversight is just a check-and-balance built into the system to protect against overzelous police work. Yes, it's causes delays and incremental costs, but it's the price to pay to protect the innocent.

Why reach out when the intent is naive farmland? I'm sure they sent a message in English explaining it all to the country they killed.

Your inability to accept rational arguements is irksome, so I've dug a little further to illustrate the point explicitly to you.

They use the 12-month period of June '98 to May '99 to give a stat of 27 fatalities. However in the calander year of '98, the last full year without speed limits, there were 31 fatalities. Now let's look at a slightly less biased reference.

http://www.bber.umt.edu/...holCrashes2010.pdf#page=3

Notice the spike in alcohol and drug related fatal crashes in 2000, with a reduction in deaths in 2001, but an upwards surge in 2002-8. Might drunk drivers be causing fatal accidents more than speed limits? For inter-year fatalities to be related, the statistic should be per vehicle-miles driven, not the gross total.

Need I go on? What I was saying is: no cause and effect is shown, only two data juxtaposed.

I did not say "religion cannot have a connection to morality". I said "religion is independent of morality". So is the morality of the Bible "an eye for an eye" or "turn the other cheek"? Is the morality of the Quran "peace and love" or "death to the infidel"? I would cite examples from other relgions, but I'm thinking you wouldn't know a Jain from a Sikh. Religion is the institutionalized extension of spirituality. If you wish your spirituality to influence your morals (There is a God, so I better listen to Him), that's all well and good, but as soon as you being to say that your morals and your God are the one and only correct ones for the nation, it becomes a problem.

Europe is your example of an unreligious society? or for a multifaceted and stable society? How do religous-based moral laws provide "a multifaceted scoiety"? England has a state religion of Anglician Church. Germany is 67% Christian and 4% Muslim. 90% of the French are Roman Catholic and Italy the seat of of the Pope. Switzerland has banned minarets, an architectural feature. The current Pope is German and the last one was Ukrainian. Do you understand my confusion when you assume American superiority based on relgious adherence? You should really learn more about the world.

The conservative Christian movement is as dangerous to the world's liberty and well being as the extremist Islamic movement is. Both think religion can replace critical thinking and understanding.

As for your smug American superiority complex, try looking up the 2003 heatwave or the fall of the Berlin Wall. That the fall of communism or the great personal struggles and risks taken would be so soon over looked hurts my heart. As for more recent history, http://www.dw-world.de/...rticle/0,,5913347,00.html

This is just rhetoric. It doesn't work like that in real life. Just because you are unaware of the quality of existing regulations does not mean they are not at appropriate levels or are automatically too high. First show us exactly what regulations are redundant and what supplimental actions can be taken. This process is ongoing, as you ignored in my statement, and can be spurred by a letter campaign to your local politicians. However, other politicians obstruct these processes for their own ends, and hence the origin of this thread.


You seems you not understand. In order for the super-rich to get the tax-cut you want, all lower and middle class Americans (those earning $350k or less a year) would need to pay a higher percentage. You wouldn't be able to reduce taxes to 10% for everyone, you would raise the median tax rate (paid by most people) to around 30%. From 1932 to 1980, those earning a quarter million or more paid between 58 to 92% tax. The tax burden of paying $3m while you have $7m left is not the same as paying $15k and having $35k left. The difference between $10m and $7m is not noticable to quality of life. The difference from $50k to $35k is significant.

Your thoughts are well intentioned, Deerhunter, but they miss the mark of reality. As Demter said, typical supply and demand trade-offs aren't appliable as distribution and processing are the choke points, not discovery and supply. In fact, North American WTI oil is severely depressed compared to Brent due to over supply.

When oil prices are referred to in the U.S. and Canada, typically the price of WTI/NYMEX crude is referred to. The refineries that use Brent obviously are paying more for that oil, and pass that cost on. Refineries who use WTI/NYMEX are paying less and can pass that savings on.

So why is WTI/NYMEX crude so cheap? The answer is complex, but WTI/NYMEX oil is stored in vast facilities in Cushing, Oklahoma have reached near record high levels, and storage space is running low, depressing prices as supply rises. WTI/NYMEX crude is essentially landlocked and can't be shipped to the Gulf for processing or the East Coast to be shipped overseas to other markets. With vast Canadian crude also being used in the Midwest, this has led to further increases of WTI crude oil at Cushing. While the Midwest benefits from the ability to receive WTI oil, many use cheaper Canadian oil, leading to a scenario of falling oil prices as supply remains lavish, but only in the Midwest.

Parts of the country that use more expensive oil will soon be paying more than the areas of the Midwest, unless supply at the NYMEX delivery point in Cushing, Oklahoma drops quickly.

Until new pipelines are build in the US to eliminate the bottleneck or in Canada to divert supply to Asia, the Midwest is oversupplied while the rest of America is stuck paying more for Brent crude.

If oil continues to be abundant in Cushing and if Canadian supply continues to build, NYMEX/WTI crude could slip even lower. For now, wholesale gasoline prices are lower in the Midwest than any other region in the country thanks to the cheaper crude.

The reason gasoline in the US is significantly cheaper than the majority of the developed world is because the US government spends between $9 billion and $18 billion a year to subsidize it's production ($36.5 billion in 2010 for the whole petroleum industry). In addtion to this, the US strategic oil reserve of 700 million barrels is often used to release batchs of cheap/old oil to reduce prices.

Beyond all that, the true reason for the continual creep in gasoline, oil, and gold prices is the devalution of the US dollar. Since 1990, it's worth about half as much against the global average. So long as the trend continues, any cost savings from more production will quickly be absorbed into the general price trend globally.

There are 7 countries in the world where gasoline is $1/gal or cheaper and 5 of them are OPEC nations. So if you want dirt cheap gasoline I'd recommend moving to Venezuela.

Angel1, you need to read the Constitution again: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Relgion is independent of morality as can been seen by the variability of the morals in any religion.

Just because you are ignorant of existing regulations, does not mean the relavent industries are. There are continual reviews and tweaks going on at various levels of government. Your suggested starting point of knowing what regulations are needed implies some sort of empirical knowledge. If based on political theories like 'trickle down economics', you end up with what is perceived as needed, instead of what actually is needed.

On taxes, unfortunately Republicans (notably the Tea Party) are against closing loopholes in tax law, such as for private jet owners. Political ideology trumps rationale thought. However, would you be willing to pay 10-20% more taxes, so that billionaires can pay the save level as you? Just convince the rest of America to do the same, and you have the deficit problem solved.

Say what you will about Jack's policies, you couldn't question if he genuinely cared. The face of Canadian politics was changed by his efforts, and his actions have lasting eaffects across the nation.

Even in his final hours, Jack had concern about how the nation will carry on. If every elected offical had such passion, we wouldn't be where we're stuck today.

My guess is Olivia Chow will be the next NDP leader, if she wants it.

Farewell Jack, you were liked and will be remembered for the life you lead.

#3 and #34 were tech allies. That 10% leached tech adds up fast and tech prices were all over the board.

Congrats, Andrew, on the win! I'm glad I decided to offer a def pact.

Traffic fatalities are highly variable by nature and any one year statistics are not reliable. Without proper statical correlations with a high confidence, or account for the increase in volume over time, you are just presenting skewed numbers that do not reflect the reality of the roads. It is now 2011, why do they not show the values from 2002-2009, or maybe they don't present the same opinionated view as that single figure viewed in isolation.

Weather plays a larger factor in year-to-year variability than speed limits, maybe that's why? Unless there is a long term trend that's been isolated as independant of other vairables, you can't tell if speed limits in Montana are effective or counter productive.

What is the defining characteristic that seperates Americans from humans that live in other parts of the world? Is a man in Kansas more entitled to employment because of his place of birth and parentage? America is a country of immigrants over the last 400 years. The only difference is if it was you or your great-granddaddy that decided to abandon their old world in search of a land where every man is judged equal.

There are two components to any economy: internal and exports. A growing population means a growing internal demand for resources and stimulates growth in construction and service industries. The US has struggled for decades with exports, and now is feeling the results. Immigrants generally are willing to work for minimum wage and minimal living condition and could increase US competitiveness. The indiginous US population would gain collateral jobs in sales and marketing.

We have to shift with world demographics, or be left behind as the world economy develops and lifts the majority of humanity out of poverty. Without an abundant supply of next-to-nothing labour, the US's innovation will restore it as a competitive market.

I was just thinking, what about oil used in defense? This would create a large demand, so that people's military would work to defend their land when attacked. It would also dampen price spikes as a larger reserve pool could be mobilized to meet a demand surge, but wouldn't be overly motivatived to undercut the price.

SOL allowed for this to happen trying to FSing LCN along with MD, as they expected LCN to come in. If SOL had only hit MD, LCN would have been called in as MD's ally instead of Sanct as LCN's ally (or maybe both at the same time).

LCN were clearly attempting to netgain, so it was a blindside. MD expected a SOL FS, but LCN did not.

However, SOL is the agressor this reset, regardless of past actions. Therefore, claims of a gangbang are counter productive, as SOL decided for pre-emptive action.

On the other side of things, I think this was poorly considered by MD/LCN. The war might have been won without help, but 3:2 in countries makes it less note worthy of any of the participants.

AxAlar - ...have asked us to show use that card... Could you not chose what word to show use?

Bottom feeding needs to be discouraged a bit, imo. There is too great a competition for too few targets that we're farming targets that reach half DRs and never actually get out of them.

However, this would be a boon to netters, as they'd be able to regain their land from a suicider.

It shouldn't remove a land kill option, for war or suiciders, unless there is more farming than killing going on. Looking at the LK on #878, there were 39 LGs and 44 LGs by one MD and one LCN. MD's #893 seemed to vanish, but the other country has 973a with 86k NW, leaving 16 SOL countries able to hit it. In this case, you'd get 22 LGs prior to the minimum 10a return kicking in and 10 LGs to finish him off. So 32 hits instead of 12 to 10% DR and ~60 hits to finish it. In this way, one land kill begets another.

To overcome this, you could use a DR factor when adding the negative value of an attack. For example, if you double tap country at the 50% DR level, it would only add -1 DR. Similarly, 10 hits after 12 DR, would add -1 DR. This would counteract the bottomfeeding concern.

I would increase the granularity of it. Instead of 3 turns for 12 hours and 6 turns for 18 hours, make it a pair of gifts: 1 turn per 4 hours since last log-in and 1 turn per 12 hours logged out.

So you get something like this:
3h - 1t
6h - 2t
9h - 3t
12h- 5t
15h- 6t
18h- 7t
21h- 8t
24h- 10t

This gives people incentive not to play constantly, or if they do break to break for a significant amount of time. This would make staying logged in to stonewall a more risky operation, as you might gain an extra turn while sat there, but also it continues to reduce server demand and bandwidth costs.