Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 November 6

= November 6 =

U.S. post office question.
What is a permit #? I'm familiar with what a P.O. Box is. In any event, Target mailed me a discount magazine. I took offense to it, and wanted to mail it back with a criticism note. Thing is, the magazine was not in an envelope, it had my address on it, and their return address was a city, state, and permit #. So at the post office, they didn't know what a permit # is, and I tried asking if they can enter it in the system to see if it's mailable? They say they can only try to mail it instead. But I said, there's no zip code, then they go "oh, then we can't mail it." So I instead picked the corporate address for Target which is in a different city. So that adds a further question, what's a permit #, and, how did they mail me without a return address? No stamp on the magazine. Shrug. 67.165.185.178 (talk) 05:05, 6 November 2021 (UTC).
 * We have an article on permit mail that gives a little more information about the permit and why there would be no stamp. Also, the article return address notes that “The return address is not required on postal mail.” —Amble (talk) 07:46, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Here is some information about bulk mail in the U.S. in 2021. Here is a USPS page about the permit process. This is not first class mail and no return address is required. Bulk mailers do not want undeliverable items returned to them. If you have a gripe with Target, contact that company directly. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  05:29, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

The (big) EEZ of the Spratly Islands
Hello and thank you for reading, I'm writing a file on South China Sea and search for precise informations to illustrate my statements. More precisely, I'm looking for the size of the EEZ a country could claim if it had the entire Spratly islands as its territory. What is the entire EEZ of the Spratly Islands ? Fun fact : Itself, the Spratly Islands covers... ¾square mile of land = 2km² only

Thank you very much for your help ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicolas de Bourgoing (talk • contribs) 15:29, 6 November 2021 (UTC)


 * For those baffled by the acronym, EEZ is (presumably) referring to a territory's exclusive economic zone. Link to Spratly Islands. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 15:46, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

A circle with a radius of 200 nautical miles assuming there is no other claim (which there are, many in fact) would be the normal limit, but some jurisdictions only claim 12 miles. DOR (HK) (talk) 21:25, 6 November 2021 (UTC)


 * In this case, it wouldn't of course be a circle, because the Spratley Islands themselves span an area several hundred miles wide in diameter, consisting of hundreds of tiny formations. On the other hand, it would be questionable if they even constitute "islands" in the full sense of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), since "rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own" are excluded from forming the basis of an EEZ claim, so the 200-mile zone couldn't be applied around all of them – or any of them, in fact. According to our article on Taiping Island, the largest of the group, the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling found that even it was just a "rock" under this convention, so the same would presumably be true for most or all of the others. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:04, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Those who can...
The phrase Those who can, do; those who can't do, teach is widely attributed to George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman. However, no formulation of the phrase appears in the text of the play, there's no sign of the phrase on Shaw's Wikiquote page, and there's no mention of Shaw on the Wiktionary entry. What is the actual origin of this phrase? —151.132.206.250 (talk) 17:21, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Shaw's Maxims for Revolutionists is an appendix to Man and Superman. In it we read "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches". On Wikisource here. DuncanHill (talk) 17:32, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It is on the Wikiquote page for Man and Superman. DuncanHill (talk) 17:44, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Project Gutenberg and another source I’d checked seem to be missing that appendix. —151.132.206.250 (talk) 17:46, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Note that the maxim differs from the version that is usually quoted.
 * He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
 * --Lambiam 17:52, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Right, but Gutenberg is missing the entire appendix from its copy of Man and Superman (they do have Maxims for Revolutionists separately). —151.132.206.250 (talk) 19:01, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't forget the third item: "Those who can't teach, teach gym." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:04, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also heard: "Those who can't teach, teach teachers." --184.145.50.17 (talk) 04:48, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yep. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:10, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Those who can't leap tall buildings in a single bound have to hoof it or take the Batmobile. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:01, 7 November 2021 (UTC)


 * My dad has said that those who cannot teach teach [the subject that he taught for forty years]. —Tamfang (talk) 02:13, 9 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I wasn't going to comment, but what the hell. The version I am most familiar with is the one on Authors. "Those who can write, write. Those who can't write teach literature. Those who can't teach literature become critics." -- Cimon Avaro&#59; on a pogostick. (talk) 16:16, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In my searching before posting the question (same user, different location), I found in the RefDesk archives from October 2013: Those who can’t teach, become WP Ref Desk editors. —96.8.24.95 (talk) 00:36, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The version of this I have from my mother (who is still teaching the occasional lesson whilst in her eighties) is "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach teach the teachers to teach; those who can't teach the teachers to teach do educational research." Chuntuk (talk) 16:38, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

What happens if an state doenst act against a spiral deflation?
There is the concept of spiral deflation, a thing that is said to happen under a price deflationary economy.

What would happen if some state instead of printing money, started to use only taxes and government bond to get its funds, and then when price deflation started to happen, instead of printing enough money to force inflated prices, it would let deflation to happen and if deflation spiral started to happen, the state would still allow price deflation to happen, NEVER trying to counter it with money printing? -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.186.28.64 (talk) 17:55, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Unless this has occurred at some point in history, I think this line from the top of the page would be relevant: We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate. [emphasis added] --151.132.206.250 (talk) 19:58, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The assumption that relying exclusivily on taxes and bonds for government finance causing deflation is faulty. There may well be insufficient demand, or the public sector's reduction of the money supply may be insufficient to cause prices to fall. In any event, (and as helpfully noted) we don't tend to speculate on "what if" scenarios. Did you have a specific economy in mind? DOR (HK) (talk) 21:30, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I am asking the effects of spiral deflation, its said deflation must be stopped, because the effects of spiral deflation are bad, I assumed those effects (that are called bad ones and used as the reason for why having inflation instead of deflation is a desirable thing) would be known and this wouldnt be a what if question.179.186.28.64 (talk) 22:14, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The Great Depression was accompanied by a deflationary spiral, which, if not the cause of the depression, greatly contributed to its severity. The section Mainstream explanations offers various views; note the subsection Modern non-monetary explanations, which questions the monetary explanation because the demand for money was falling more rapidly than the supply during the initial downturn. So printing more money would not have helped. The appropriate response may not be that simple. But without any intervention, the whole economic apparatus may be liquidated, bringing everyone who has not stashed lots of money away to poverty and dependent on foreign aid. --Lambiam 23:38, 6 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Andrew Mellon's alleged advice to Herbert Hoover was "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate", but it would have been quite dangerous to apply that as a systematic policy in the 1930s, since (for example) if factories were closed even though some people wanted to work in the factories and other people wanted to buy what the factories made, and most people couldn't understand any real reason why the factories should be closed other than esoteric capitalist financial maneuvers between tycoons and bankers, then that would have provided an incentive for a significant fraction of the population to insist that some other system than capitalism be tried (if capitalism wasn't up to the job of keeping the factories active)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:35, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Are you implying it is quite dangerous to consider any other system than capitalism? Liquidationism is dangerous because it boosts the downward spiral. --Lambiam 12:11, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Dangerous for people like Andrew Mellon. He seemed to have a very limited imagination, and thought that people would accept any amount of personal suffering in the name of what he considered to be the sacredness of the existing system of financial obligations, but that's not true (and it was even less true in the 1930s than other eras in American history).  AnonMoos (talk) 15:54, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

These days, "printing money" is not done by the govt, it's done by fractional reserve banking. Which makes me wonder why there's not runaway inflation. As for getting out of a spiral like the great depression, Walter Scheidel's book The Great Leveler says it's done by war and other catastrophic forms of redistribution (WW2 in the case of the great depression). I haven't read this book but it sounds interesting. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 19:21, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
 * As long as money supply keeps pace with various measures of economic growth, then the increased money supply doesn't have to lead to hyperinflation. -- Jayron 32 16:48, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Setting aside the first comment as to why deflation might arise, the reason that deflation is considered by economists to be more dangerous than inflation is because of the policy tools available to combat it. In the case of rising prices, the options are (a) increase taxes, so as to remove excess money supply from the economy; (b) reduce government expenditure, so as to trim public sector demand in the face of what may well be excessive private sector demand; or (c) tighten monetary policy by any of a variety of ways (chiefly, raising interest rates) so as to soak up excess liquidity and curtail private sector demand. In the case of deflation, the options are (d) reduce taxes, so as to let more money held in private hands circulate in the economy; (e) increase government spending, so as to expand public demand in the face of what is most probably inadequate private sector demand; or (f) lower interest rates, to encourage private investment and consumption. Aside from the fiscal problem that (d) and (e) will greatly increase the government deficit, (f) has a theoretical lower limit – 0% interest – since many believe that negative interest rates are difficult to sustain over the necessary length of time. DOR (HK) (talk) 16:27, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Twin soul
Beyond definition and description, twin soul exist and wait me in Heaven, or is utopia? --151.71.50.80 (talk) 19:24, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There are articles on Soul dualism, Heaven and utopia; as to your fate, who knows? (not anybody here). --107.15.157.44 (talk) 20:52, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Which belief system are you asking about? This question needs additional context. —96.8.24.95 (talk) 00:24, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The true one, of course! —Tamfang (talk) 02:15, 9 November 2021 (UTC)