asciilifeform: it is precisely the 'colour of bits' though, no ?
asciilifeform: title is a convenient fiction. whereas 'does this system run on human fat' is an answerable question. and a car market where mircea_popescu paid for his mazerati but tyrone stole and sold for fiddybux, is not conducive to continued production of mazeratis.
asciilifeform: but of the elementary sense in which stolen cars are not legitimately reflective of the cost of making car.
asciilifeform: whereas if syria pumps, isis loots, and then sells for pennies on the dollar - then yes.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: here is where i must disagree: mineral that someone digs up, then sells, and the selling pays for the digging - is not in any useful sense stolen
asciilifeform: wondering where remanant of brain - went.
asciilifeform: picture, would be there still, watering office plants or sumthing.
asciilifeform: aha, sorta how many years ago i tried to work in nsa.
asciilifeform: which is, that mathematics is ~accessible~ to the determined mind. always, with no exception, WITHOUT demanding a swallowing of seekrit evidence.☟︎
asciilifeform: and mircea_popescu appears to be deliberately glossing over important difference between asciilifeform in petro thread and the proverbial 'all functions are convex!!1111' kid above
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu had an article, iirc, where 'when considering avg price of cars, do not also average in the price of stolen cars sold in a hurry'☟︎
asciilifeform: (e.g., what happened to saddam h's petro deal with fr, and why? where is ghaddafi's?)
asciilifeform: but also because the petro market is only partly a market, but partly also a system of tribute collection and other non-commercial exchange
asciilifeform: at least partly because ~the usd~ is an artifact consisting largely of fiction;
asciilifeform: the above is why i never dug into the 'pricing of energetics' thing in detail - i find he subj quite similar to, e.g., usg unemployment figures - i have no access to the seeeekrit evidence required to cut away the fiction from the reality☟︎
asciilifeform: the 100, as i understand, is a more honest figure, it factors in actual trend (no prizes for guessing: down) in production, aint nobody making moar of it.. - and is less affected by the anti-ru dumping presently in effect
asciilifeform: i'd luvvv to know, why the special pleading for petrocar, it is quite the same as winblowz, x86, and other 'this is mainstream, cheap, normal and stop counting the actual damage from it as cost, you terrorist'
asciilifeform: laugh at both, or neither, or you have unprincipled-exception.
asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-07-29#1511386 << argument concerned simple principle: if folks dun feel like counting gulf war I and II, and ~all~ wahabbi derpery, etc. as 'part of cost of petro', i can just as readily say that fukushima, chernobyl are 'not in the cost' of fission-power. etc☝︎
asciilifeform: 'petro is mainstream, ubiquitous, easy, fuck off with the weird'
asciilifeform: pete_dushenski: this entire thread reminds me of a uniquely-american, incidentally, pasttime: impassioned defense of the heathen imperial system of weights&measures
asciilifeform: what planet's usa did pete_dushenski visit..?
