This has come up a couple of times so I must not have been clear enough in the video. I'm not advocating a pay-to-play system. Valve doesn't really do that model, and it wouldn't work here. I'm advocating a free system with an optional payment component. If you pay, just like everything else in TF2, you have the chance to get special (but mainly frivolous) items. That's a model that works very well for Valve.

The community's doing a fantastic job of recruiting and training at the moment. This is just a pitch for an additional thing that Valve could do, and it'd make them some money too.

#30 That's why my idea is centered around increasing the ongoing cash flows from the game in the form of monthly/daily/per-match tickets.

I emailed Valve and included this thread + the reddit one for them to analyze for feedback. Here's hoping they take a look!

"borrow-spend-tax" as if there's some other way to run fiscal policy. What should we do, pull money out of unicorns' assholes?

How is nobody talking about the first half of that show?

I did not know that!

Edit: Or maybe I did and completely forgot?

#30 Interest rates are not "artificially" low. They are low because the entire private sector has been in a deleveraging cycle for four years. Everyone wants to save, nobody (including companies) wants to spend to previous levels. With everyone paying down debt at the same time, the demand for money (as reflected in the interest rate) goes down. So no, they aren't "artificially" low - they're low for a very real reason!

As for student loans being a bubble, that's an interesting thought. What would be required for that bubble to burst? I think banks currently have a pretty good handle on the likelihood of student loan default, and they already build in default assumptions into their accounting statements. So under what scenario would this bubble burst?

edit: bluh I can't explain anything

#26 What bubble are you suggesting exists? I'd say gold is a bubble right now but not one that's large enough to threaten a serious chunk of GDP.

You already see how an aging population is affecting the economy - health care costs go up. Eventually, as a large swath of workers age out of the labor force and continue to live, they'll put a larger burden on social security and medicare taxes. The thing is, we'll be seeing all that unfurl in slow motion - over the course of several years - and that sort of thing is eminently fixable. It'll go down one of two ways - increasing tax rates on the young, working population or lower benefits for the retired population. Depends on who's in power and has a better political structure.

Higher tax rates or lower benefits to support an aging population are about as far from armageddon as you can get. Let's not blow this out of proportion. The USA currently enjoys the lowest marginal tax rates in practically a hundred years, certainly since the Great Depression. There is no clear evidence that increasing, say, the capital gains tax or the top marginal rates will slow down economic growth at all.

I think the entire premise that we're on a decline is hogwash. How do you even measure that? What makes the phrase "America is declining" anything other than pure opinion?

Don't make me get out my economics graphs. You won't like my economics graphs. You will beg for mercy.

Geocities is alive and well :o

http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/1199yo/8_hours_from_this_post_sal_and_cbear_talk_tf2/

Upvote or die

I'm free all day that day. Would love to help out!

What makes the existence of misinformed or stupid people in this age different from any other?

One of these days when I don't have to take classes on weekends anymore this stuff will be priority 1.