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Cavegirl

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  1. And with that I end my time on Sheffield Forum. It's been too long since I spoke to anyone who wasn't completely self-obsessed and/ or totally arrogant. This isn't a pleasant place to be anymore. There are a few really nice and interesting people on here- Janie, Chem1st, Chris Sleeps, Melthebell, Staunton, Megalithic, Rootsbooster and Anna B to name a few but I never seem to chat to you all sadly. I wish you all well.
  2. The average life expectancy in 1400AD Britain was 30 years old for a commoner. The reason girls were married young was because their parents wanted to ensure their future before they themselves died. I imagine it's the same for modern cultures that marry their children young- either they still have a low life expectancy or their cultural attachment to child marriage has been too strong to break down so far. Ahh, just seen cgkSheff's post, he got their before me
  3. OK so you use a product development strategy to grow your business within an existing customer base. Are you responsible for the Gilette razor going from one blade to two to three and now to four with little to no basis in actual performance improvement? Enquiring minds wanna know! I think it's a useful additional strategy for well-known brands to move into new areas, but can I see Capitalism existing solely on the notion of adding an extra blade to a razor every year in perpetuity, nope siree I can't.
  4. Thankyou for the maths by the way, sorry not to have said that before. Could you explain to me what 'raising something to the power of' means (this symbol ^) and how I go about it please? As I said, maths isn't my language and I am interested in the outcome. Stuff was invented, produced and developed before capitalism came along, I don't think it really deserves a pat on the back for developing a wireless phone, but I agree that it is just one example of many products and I selected it purely as an example. I also agree with you that the service sectors aim to build some sort of relationship with their customers- something I'd suggest the Americans are far better and far more advanced at than us Brits. One of the main problems with capitalism however, is that it reduces what were once diverse and complex social relationships to simple over the counter money transactions and any relationship built within it will always be a shadow of the types of relationships constructed before capitalism was introduced. But even services suffer from market saturation issues and that's the same whether we're talking about local or global populations. Once a town for example, is saturated, the coffee shops become unprofitable until some shops collapse and the ones remaining retain stable profit with no chance of growth. It's the same for a town as it is for the whole world because both have a finite geography. So you see, it's very important for people to know when capitalism can no longer expand because then the model has to either stagnate, change or perish. We need to find better answers than to grow the population because this system is too destructive and wasteful to sustain more than double our current population growth. ---------- Post added 20-07-2013 at 21:42 ---------- Hahaha, so you swim with sharks on a daily basis, yet it seems you run away from general conversations like a little girl. Toodle-pip!
  5. I see how you've tried to twist things there, but I'm afraid your growth has actually come mainly from filling the old smaller house with fresh new tenants - the growth of your business actually comes from introducing new homes and new tenants irrespective of what your old tenants are up to. Your existing tenant was paying let's say £650 a month, but upgrades from a 3 bed to a 4 bed so they're now paying £800 a month- giving you an extra £150 a month from them. Your new tenant is paying £650 a month for the original house which is much greater completely new income. Previously you had £650 coming in, but by adding a new house and a new tenant you now have £1450 coming in regardless of which house is occupied by whom. Whether the new tenant moves into the more or less expensive house they are the ones really increasing your profit margins.
  6. Look at most of my past posts Carosio, I'm constantly trying to convince people to look at other models for living rather than capitalism or agreeing with others when they present new ideas. I know I'm addicted, I'm as conditioned as anyone else to value and view my life through what I own. Just the other week I was really angry with myself because I was walking along the side of the canal in the sunshine and a mother duck with her babies came swimming towards me and instead of watching the beauty of the scene I was too busy looking for my phone so I could take a photo, by the time I got it out the ducks were gone. Like everyone else I automatically seek the fake over the real due to our technological lifestyles, but at least I recognise that, I try to prevent myself when I can and learn from my mistakes when I don't- most people wouldn't even consider the situation from that perspective. I know that there are people in Africa who can sit by a roadside for hours waiting for a bus, perfectly happy with their own thoughts and no other form of entertainment day after day after day and I know that I couldn't do that because I've been conditioned throughout my life to be plugged in, to be entertained and I find that sad, I find that philosophically speaking I'm less than human because of it. I want us to have an economic model that doesn't create and maintain hierarchies so that some have too much whilst others have too little, I want us to have a model based upon stability rather than profit motive, based upon cooperation rather than competition. A model that allows people to be exactly what they want to be, to acheive their full potential. A model that utilises resources intelligently rather than wastes them which would enable us to support many more people, perhaps even populate zones that seem impossible to populate under profit driven capitalism. There are ideas for these types of models of living out there, but it requires a social change to adopt them, I can move my life more towards them but I can't live them and that is frustrating. I don't want to be psychologically addicted to the way I live, I want to be adaptable, I want to be human. I'm ready to change, I spend a lot of my life studying how best to change, I've been ready to begin for a long time, but society isn't ready to change and probably won't be during my lifetime unless of course it's forced to and that would be pretty catastrophic. ---------- Post added 20-07-2013 at 17:11 ---------- You're a landlord Arr Sez I right? Do you aim to grow your business purely through your existing lettings or would you find it more profitable to add more houses and gain new tenants for your existing portfolio? Expansion is growth and expansion requires fresh consumers. You won't get much by offering your current tenants an extra bathroom in their home because they probably won't need one (though in your case I realise there may be exceptions )Your existing customers simply pay for you to grow.
  7. It doesn't represent the real world of course that's a far more complex issue. This is a purely academic exercise but it's designed to provide a more realistic idea of what 3% exponential growth of capitalism in our global population really means. It's much easier for capitalists to sell to fresh markets- people who don't have a phone will buy a phone, people who already have a phone must be convinced to give up their current phone for a new one and that means the extra expense of research and development alongside marketing for the phone manufacturers. Now that the large fresh markets of Russia and China are becoming saturated where do capitalists find that fresh easy growth? Essentially they must invest money into developing markets which they won't like doing much and then they need to start pushing population growth. Alternatively capitalism will either have to develop into essentially a stagnant economic model relying on growth of up to 0.5% per annum or something new will have to replace it.
  8. I don't think anybody is really tackling this issue Cyclone, David Harvey brings it up occasionally during some of his lectures but hasn't really looked at the data as far as I can tell. World population growth increases annually at around 1.096%. When capitalism began the world population was around 1 billion people/ consumers so it could grow quite merrily at 3% into this existing population. 3% exponential growth of a smaller subset is still smaller than 1.1% growth of the overall set, but eventually it will catch up and begin to overtake the overall set. I suggest we're getting towards that point now. So why don't we do some original research on SF? You're a left-brained kinda guy/gal and I assume you like a challenge and will trust your own results far more than any paper I can produce for you. I'm not so great at maths and it would take me ages to work this out, but if you're not up for the challenge I'll do it. Start in 1600AD with 1 billion people and add exponentially 1.096% each year. Start with the population of the Netherlands in 1600AD which was 1.5 million and add 2.5% exponential growth per year (reduced to account for internal growth). Can you discover what year the second subset overtakes the first main set? I'd be very interested in the answer. We know that when the second overtakes the first we'll have total market saturation and will rely upon 2.5% population growth/ new consumers each year for capitalism to expand 'healthily'.
  9. Landlords care more about their income than their property. We know this because when private letting supply was high they often ignored their properties and let them fall into disrepair. As supply fell they could afford to do up their properties and encourage better tenants into them. The ONLY reason landlords are turning away DSS/ LHA tenants at the moment is that demand for private lets is now outstripping supply- they can afford to be choosy and almost all lettings are decribed as 'luxury' flats and houses having been updated through IKEA. If supply began to outstrip demand they'd soon start welcoming in DSS/ LHA applicants to ensure they kept their income.
  10. Sad to say I think it's absolutely necessary because we're socially conditioned from birth these days to associate material posessions with personal status and value. We're addicted to them. To suggest you could give up most of your possessions in search of a simpler life is the equivalent of a smoker saying he'll quit whilst still having a packet of cigs in his pocket- it's safe and easy. The anguish only comes when the packet runs out. You can give up most material goods easily enough whilst you're still surrounded by them, whilst you're still safe in the knowledge that if you miss that TV/ car/ phone etc you can simply go out and buy another, but consider what it would be like if your goods were gone and the shops were all empty and then you'll start to see the point and scope of our addiction. Just like cigarettes, capitalism will also end up killing most of us off. The 3% annual growth that capitalism requires isn't the growth of ideas, technology or money as most people assume, it's the exponential growth of population, of new consumers. We had a good ride when Russia, China and other Communist/ undeveloped countries opened up to capitalist markets, they offered plenty of new consumers but now that market is becoming saturated, people aren't consuming as rapidly and the developed capitalist countries are suffering. This is why we spend a lot on oveseas development aid- so we can get them to a stage where they'll buy iphones and dvd players, it's money well spent in a capitalist market. We managed to offset lack of growth for a while by growing our own populations through immigration, but that was a short fix so now we're selling all our state held facilities to private companies and putting risk in the hands of consumers rather than companies for another short fix- it's the equivalent of pawning your goods to pay the month's bills. When this ends, be prepared for a sustained economic plan by the government to encourage women to have babies and plenty of them- it will be all that's left for them to do and will only speed up the loss and destruction of all useful resources on the planet. Capitalism can't change and we won't change so living with less is admirable but ultimately pointless.
  11. If that's the case, the easiest test I can think of would be to try a decent magnet with it as it's flint + iron that makes a spark and iron's magnetic. In the image the pebble looks quite glassy, but I can't see any signs of metallic veining or inclusions. All I can think of at the moment is that it may be river rolled vitrified sand or glass with some tiny metallic shard inclusions. I once found some vitrified sandstone on the building stones of a large lime kiln, it was green, glass-like and had a patina in places. So perhaps it is a waste product from an industrial process, but I can't think of anything likely in Ecclesall Woods- it's mostly quarrying and Q-pits there and I don't think a charcoal hearth would burn hot enough. Sorry I can't be more help.
  12. It's definately not a prehistoric tool I'm afraid Megalithic. There's a very nice guide to identifying prehistoric tools in case you're ever unsure here: http://www.leics.gov.uk/flint_id_guide.pdf You could make a homemade tumbler to polish up nice little pebbles like this that you find, I've found some beautiful pieces of jasper on the east coast that I polished up, always on the look out to make my fortune with a decent piece of raw amber though hehe http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/2166/DIY-Rock-Tumbler
  13. Look at the current trends Earthly- the rising costs of petrol and diesel are forcing more and more people off the road- why would you destroy a beautiful historic bridge when the trend suggests the new widened structure is likely to be unnecessary in a decade or so? Even the government is no longer pushing new road schemes, all their emphasis is on high speed trains.
  14. Yup, the army has always promoted small feet and faces.
  15. I guess even if you wrote Honk Honk! at the end of every sentence your humour would still be too subtle for some people- the highlighted part nearly had me crying with laughter! Always good to have more witty, smart and imaginative members- welcome to the Forum!
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