The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.

According therefore as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion.

But this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must, in that particular situation, depend upon those two circumstances.

The abundance or scantiness of this supply, too, seems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter. Among the savage nations of hunters and fishers, every individual who is able to work, is more or less employed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as he can, the necessaries and conveniences of life, for himself, or such of his family or tribe as are either too old, or too young, or too infirm to go a hunting and fishing. Such nations, however, are so miserably poor that, from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or, at least, think themselves reduced, to the necessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts. Among civilised and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do not labour at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

The causes of this improvement, in the productive powers of labour, and the order, according to which its produce is naturally distributed among the different ranks and conditions of men in the society, make the subject of the first book of this Inquiry.

Whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which labour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportion between the number of those who are annually employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. The number of useful and productive labourers, it will hereafter appear, is everywhere in proportion to the quantity of capital stock which is employed in setting them to work, and to the particular way in which it is so employed. The second book, therefore, treats of the nature of capital stock, of the manner in which it is gradually accumulated, and of the different quantities of labour which it puts into motion, according to the different ways in which it is employed.

Nations tolerably well advanced as to skill, dexterity, and judgment, in the application of labour, have followed very different plans in the general conduct or direction of it; those plans have not all been equally favourable to the greatness of its produce. The policy of some nations has given extraordinary encouragement to the industry of the country; that of others to the industry of towns. Scarce any nation has dealt equally and impartially with every sort of industry. Since the downfall of the Roman empire, the policy of Europe has been more favourable to arts, manufactures, and commerce, the industry of towns, than to agriculture, the industry of the country. The circumstances which seem to have introduced and established this policy are explained in the third book.

Though those different plans were, perhaps, first introduced by the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men, without any regard to, or foresight of, their consequences upon the general welfare of the society; yet they have given occasion to very different theories of political economy; of which some magnify the importance of that industry which is carried on in towns, others of that which is carried on in the country. Those theories have had a considerable influence, not only upon the opinions of men of learning, but upon the public conduct of princes and sovereign states. I have endeavoured, in the fourth book, to explain, as fully and distinctly as I can, those different theories, and the principal effects which they have produced in different ages and nations.

To explain in what has consisted the revenue of the great body of the people, or what has been the nature of those funds which, in different ages and nations, have supplied their annual consumption, is the object of these four first books. The fifth and last book treats of the revenue of the sovereign, or commonwealth. In this book I have endeavoured to show, first, what are the necessary expenses of the sovereign, or commonwealth; which of those expenses ought to be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society; and which of them by that of some particular part only, or of some particular members of it: secondly, what are the different methods in which the whole society may be made to contribute towards defraying the expenses incumbent on the whole society, and what are the principal advantages and inconveniences of each of those methods: and, thirdly and lastly, what are the reasons and causes which have induced almost all modern governments to mortgage some part of this revenue, or to contract debts, and what have been the effects of those debts upon the real wealth, the annual produce of the land and labour of the society.

Netscape tried that, turns out it was a bad idea

get a motorized height adjustable standing desk, an egg timer and a slow treadmill, set the timer to 16 minutes and 43 seconds, every time the timer runs out, rotate between standing position, sitting position and walking position while resetting the timer.

When you’re ready to level up, upgrade from just an office chair for the sitting positon to a mixture of office chair, saddle chair, prayer mat and stout 19th century four-legged wooden stool certified handmade in the russian far east. Rotation as follows:

standing -> office chair -> treadmill -> saddle chair -> standing -> prayer mat -> treadmill -> flat stool -> repeat.

When you’re ready for the endgame, upgrade from an egg timer to a stochastic bell timer powered by a brass cyclograph. This eliminates any possible linear relationship with your BRAC cycle, ensuring a well-rounded dynamic stress regimen.

they said optimize CPU usage, not reduce CPU usage. clearly they actually want to increase CPU utilization in this mysterious “0.02%” situation in order to get the results faster

Maybe not in single player, but if you try putting more than a few dozen players on one vanilla server, the performance is going down the drain

Unlike buffalo, there is no law saying you can’t have an infinite hierarchy of higher-order FactoryFactories producing lower-order FactoryFactories

It’s even more direct than that, the statement itself is absolute so logically it’s equivalent to saying “I am a sith”

to be fair, I may have gotten a bit lucky with the exact search, any other section of the lyrics would most likely not find it

The first one is “Go Green” by Mitch Benn

found it in 2 minutes just by googling the lyrics in your comment, specifically this search:

"go green when they go green"

We’ll go green when you go green
You’ll go green when he goes green
We’ll get as far as aquamarine or so
But we’re still gonna call it green

but I couldn’t find the second one

disagreeing with a bunch of delusional tankies is not the same thing as trolling, and I think somewhere deep down you know that.

That you’ve successfully driven away 99% of people who disagree with you does not make you any more correct.

Your unwillingness to understand does not a non sequitur make.

I long wondered how he manages to identify as a libertarian despite what he spends all his time talking about, now it’s starting to make more sense lol

what is relevant is the difference exists, and is a trend that can easily be extrapolated into “blossoming democracy”, especially in the minds of the russian people.

real democracy is when all power is concentrated in one person who rules for 20+ years at a time and criticizing him is highly correlated with falling out of a window. There is absolutely no possible nuance.

Hey, that’s unfair! As long as you don’t make silly beginner mistakes like using the standard library’s string implementation, the standard library’s regex implementation, the standard library’s hash table implementation, or standard io, C++ is almost always faster than python!

the scott alexander fanclub on reddit is especially unhinged lately. Some choice picks, beginning gently with a sneer:

Anyone who says there is a 0% chance of a fried egg being sentient is overconfident. Nobody knows what causes consciousness. We have no way of detecting it & we can barely agree on a definition. So we should be less than 100% certain about anything to do with consciousness and fried eggs.

moving on,

For me, I currently believe that the way forward is gathering my Dunbar community of ~150 values-aligned people and dropping out together to live in intentional community, generally off-the-grid, interacting with technology only as a tool (no news/algorithms/push notifications), close enough to a major city to visit friends but far enough away to isolate ourselves when we want to.
We then push forward into an unknown world, supporting each other, doing enough trade and consulting with the outside world to ensure a positive trade surplus for the collective and distributing the profits among us to sustain the community.

Yes, that is a response to AI despair. In a “non-doomer thread”. Because of course.

but what takes the cake is the regularly scheduled IQ thread, a beautiful dumpster fire which burns especially bright on this day. Yet one specimen soars above the din:

The average should recognize and accept their inferiority and make peace with the fact that they will live and die a mediocre life. They should stop trying to interfere in the affairs of their betters and content themselves with their own garden, which can provide enough happiness for them until the end of their life if properly cultivated.

Further study of the user’s excreta clarifies that they are:

• sincere
• definitely not racist

warning: HEAVY PSYCHIC DAMAGE and I really hope the spoiler block functions correctly on your end

(archives: one two three)

Spotify also originally got all its music by pirating it. But later it started printing money for record labels (while fucking over musicians) so all was forgiven.

Leases would show as zero on the balance sheet if the government owned their own buildings. But of course someone decided that was “against the free market” so now the government cannot own anything in the name of “efficiency”

sweden also refrigerates their eggs.

I don’t see affirmative action as fundamentally bad. Applied correctly and not too heavy-handedly, the privileged will still have equal opportunity to enroll or get the job, per amount of effort they put in, etc. And even if it is a bit too strong, their privilege will most likely make up for it in other ways.

In practice though, it’s highly susceptible to backfire effects and is usually on the wrong side of “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. You can’t expect someone who grew up malnourished, undereducated and generally mistreated by society to suddenly bounce back and become a “model citizen” when they get a good job or scholarship, statistically speaking.