/sci/ - Science & Math

my guess is that it's because alcohol is pretty toxic, even to humans, and you're giving them what amounts to a massive overdose. Could possibly be some other indirect effect like dessication or suffocating/drowning them.

>I've been spraying my deodorant
or it could be another component, or a result of some combination


Sounds like a good excuse to do SCIENCE!

fleas breathe through skin. most things sprayed on them will kill them. Bug sprays are worth the cost,, because the residue sticks around on surfaces, and will continue killing insects for a time after application.

>>3964987
yeah yeah i wondered about that, you mean the solution is blocking their spiracles right? but would that mean any solution would do it? or is that some simple coincidence?

>>3964988
whether or not the toxicity of the alcohol alone was enough left me wondering, thus why i listed the entire formula, i'm not sure if they're literally "drowning" but what i've noticed is that once it is sprayed they jump away and start getting "disoriented" and them when they're quieter i let a few drops on top of them and they're gone

try breathing your deodorant. see if you survive.

don't be a dumbass

>>3964998
>comparing humans to insects

seriously? i mean come on.

Hey OP!

Use this shit in the video, me and my wife had flea problems in our house for a while, spraying did nothing but smell up the fucking place, so we found this video, tried it out, laid down around 5 of these traps around the house, and I shit you not, we must of killed thousands of these fuckers
Good luck OP, Fleas are a fucking bitch to get rid of, but this trap works pretty nicely

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKiHaNT6Bi8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKiHaNT6Bi8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKiHaNT6Bi8&feature=related

>>3964997
So wait a minute. You're surprised that basically submerging a living being in alcohol kills it?

>>3964997
they are not drowning, they are poisoned by alcohol

Many bugs will not drown. You get them wet emoigh, it looks like they are dead, then 20 minutes later once tjey dried off, they are moving again.

>>3965423
>but the alcohol remains lol

>>3965423
> implying the surface tension of water is the same as the surface tension of alcohol

>>3965442

>>3964984
> What's the fucking point of buying insecticides when simple alcohol gets them?

So that capitalists can keep making money.

They can't make near the same amount of money by re-selling simple alcohol. Simple alcohol is dirt cheap.

Those other sprays are just nonsense; literally they are snake oil. They just don't work as well as the old methods and substances. They were made to take your money. That's how capitalism matures in society.

The best way to get rid of fleas is to comb them off the pet. Period. That's where they will collect and the animal is the focus of their life cycle. Your pet is undoubtedly rolling in the eggs and nymphs which continue the life cycle. Left to themselves, the eggs may hatch, but the nymphs produced will just die without access to their food, which is the half-digested shit from the fleas on the animal. And the nymphs can't go after blood by themselves, so off the animal they tend to die (unless they are swarming in the flea shit that drops off, like in your pet's bedding).

Once you understand the flea life cycle, breaking that cycle is fairly easy, but takes some time, and is part of the 100% effectiveness of killing them off. But capitalists can't sell you that.

Since fleas can't swim and drown in water anyway, picking them off your pet with a good flea comb and tossing them into a container of detergent-spiked water will kill them. Absolutely. Again, all the capitalists can get you on is that flea comb, which is about 3-4 times as expensive as it should be, but at least it's a lot less expensive than constantly buying up that snake oil (i.e. anti-flea sprays and fogs).

Oh, and if you can isolate the adult fleas for about 9 months, so that they don't latch onto you or your pets, they will all die off. Every one of them.

Good luck.

>>3965492

Did you just claim that an adult flea can live for 9 MONTHS without eating?

>>3965492

I never knew capitalists were so allergic to money! If just one company made an alcohol-based spray, which you admit is cheaper than the formula they use, they would make much more money than their competition.

CAPITALISM: Run by people who don't want to make too much money.

>>3965510
Not sure about fleas, but bedbugs can live for 1-2 years without feeding. If they sit still their bodies hardly expend any energy. They are not warm-blooded like us and don't have a large brain that requires energy constantly.

>>3965510

Yes. They can live for a long while without eating. Check the wiki. It's probably a statistical process. Most probably die after 4-5 months without eating, with more and more of the population dying, and very few make it to the 9-month mark. However, those few can regenerate their population in a tearing hurry.

I've seen fleas endure a long winter (about a 6-month period) and come back to infest my pet. Since they were not on me at all, and I'm very sure they were not on my pet (from occasional flea combing), and there was no other likely source, then winter survival seems the remaining conclusion.

>>3965535
You're naive.

Marketing tells people what to think and what to buy.

The effectiveness of the product doesn't matter nearly as much as the marketing of said product.

Don't forget to buy some Head-On when you go shopping today. Also, be sure to spend 1/4th your salary on a diamond ring for your fiancee.

>>3965552

So make an alcohol-based spray and market that. You'll make more money than your competition because your product is cheaper to make but you can sell it at the same price (temporarily).

Why would they intentionally create a product that costs THEM more money to produce? You are still assuming that capitalists aren't greedy.

>>3965562
You mistakenly assume that their cocktail of chemicals costs more than alcohol.

It doesn't.

>>3965535
You've only isolated one factor in making money: the cost of materials.
You are ignoring liability (alcohol sprays are practically dangerous) and potential abuses (have a sip of flea spray, I heard it's just alcohol). You are ignoring patent protection (no one can patent alcohol as an active ingredient).
You are ignoring the psychological effects: people give more credence (regardless of effect) to unfamiliar smells, complex packaging, and marketing.
You are also assuming there is a very large expense to creating the chemicals they do choose; there may not be that much cost.

>/sci/ - turning biology threads into economics
imokwiththis.jpg

>>3965535
PART ONE OF TWO

> If just one company made an alcohol-based spray, which you admit is cheaper than the formula they use, they would make much more money than their competition.

You don't understand capitalism. Time for Dr. Violent Simians to give another lecture.

Firstly the producer wouldn't corner the market. Consumers can know that alcohol is more effective, yet they cont. flocking to the "magic" products (i.e. snake oil) of the capitalists.

Secondly as capitalism matures, there's strong market collusion. Established producers dominate the market and it acquires huge inertia. Not only do new ones become rare, since the other capitalists drive up costs (including fomenting biased regulation), but old ones become niched and don't cross the boundaries into markets of others.

Lastly, when capitalism matures, producers are very reluctant to make cheap products or provide cheap services. All tend to want a large profit margin.

>>3965535
PART TWO OF TWO

When they DO offer a cheap product, it's overpriced. The comparatively huge expense of a simple flea comb proves that one. More proof:

I went looking for plant insecticide; I had a gnat infestation. Schultz makes "Garden Safe" brand insecticide. 24oz for $3. So, what was in it? The label says:

"Potassium Salts of Fatty Acids"

I laughed as I bought it, since I had a strong suspicion. Sure enough, I got home & looked it up. The potassium salts of fatty acids is COMMON SOAP. I had purchased a bottle of SOAPY WATER for $3.

That's what happens when capitalism matures! The producers become very set in their ways by slowly stopping flows of cheap products in order to get more money out of you. They develop means of deceit (calling soap "potassium salts of fatty acids") in order to sell items that would otherwise be too cheap to sell. They don't upset the status quo with other producers, which would lead to a price war which nobody wins ( ...amongst themselves; nobody cares about YOU, the consumer). They provoke government regulation in order to make the barrier of entry into their markets too high for newcomers. They are all scum and they'd take your last dollar by fraud if they could.

Welcome to mature capitalism.

>>3965570
>You mistakenly assume that their cocktail of chemicals costs more than alcohol.
>It doesn't.

I shall direct you to the original post I was responding to:

>>3965492
>They can't make near the same amount of money by re-selling simple alcohol. Simple alcohol is dirt cheap.

Either it is cheaper or it isn't. If the sooper dooper bugsquasher formula is cheaper, that's great! That means bug spray is cheaper than it otherwise would be if it was just alcohol, and there is no reason to use alcohol.

>>3965577

1. I'm operating off what the initial guy said. If the difference in materials cost and efficacy is negligible, than who cares whether the GREEDY CORPORASHUNS use alcohol or their wunder-mixes?
2. If the regular sprays are more safe perhaps it is good that we aren't using alcohol-based sprays. I don't understand why patent protection would be desirable if non-patented products work the same and are cheaper. Selling alcohol for industrial purposes already happens in the form of methylated spirits (governments force anyone making these chemicals to intentionally spike them with methyl alcohol to kill anyone who attempts to get drunk off of them) so I imagine industrial bug spray would follow similar rules.
3. As far as I know alcohol has both an exotic smell, and you can package or market any product however you like regardless of its actual contents.
4. I assumed no such thing. I was working off of the assumption of the original poster that alcohol is cheaper and that the reason it wasn't used was GREEDY CAPITUHLISTS were covering it up. Using this fact I demonstrated that either capitalists weren't greedy and were happy making less money, or that HIS assumption is wrong and that alcohol either isn't as effective or isn't cheaper.

>>3965578
Someone has to stick a fork in the socialists if they get too inflated. I enjoy watching them squirm once you show the inherent contradictions in their arguments and beliefs.

>>3965579

If your point is that governments enable large corporations to get bigger I'd agree with you. Getting rid of governments would go a long way towards evening out the playing field.

Collusion is impossible in a free market system, as all it takes is 1 greedy person for the whole thing to collapse. That's why you only see collusion in highly regulated industries and/or government granted monopolies/oligopolies/cartels.

>>3965582

So you are stupid and this is someone else's fault? That's what I'm getting out of part 2 here. I thought it was common knowledge that soap was the way to deal with gnats/fruit flies?

This also seems to undermine your initial point. Either the GREEDY CORPORASHUNS make up useless formulas to sell to DIMWITTED SHEEPLE or they use the cheaper tried n' true. Which are you arguing? First you argue bug spray is needlessly complicated when alcohol would work fine, now you are complaining about a different kind of bug spray being simple soap and water, which you don't like because you wanted a wunder formula full of complicated thingies. Which is it?

>>3965658
>Collusion is impossible in a free market system, as all it takes is 1 greedy person for the whole thing to collapse. That's why you only see collusion in highly regulated industries and/or government granted monopolies/oligopolies/cartels.

In a market where the corporations are absolutely and totally free from regulation, they regulate themselves by introducing barriers to entry in the market.

Such barriers can range from any number of things, for instance, having enough guns to kill anyone who tries to enter your market.

The entrenched entities will build up fortifications to keep themselves from being ousted, and a free market does NOTHING to change that. Regulation, however, DOES.

The problem is that corporations have twisted our regulatory bodies to work in their favor. Our governments are owned by the corporations and work for the corporations.

Give it a hundred years, and the difference between a corporation and a government will be indistinguishable. Corporations like Microsoft or Google will own entire cities.

>>3965658
>This also seems to undermine your initial point. Either the GREEDY CORPORASHUNS make up useless formulas to sell to DIMWITTED SHEEPLE

You are an antagonistic nitwit.

A free market requires a fully informed customer in order to function efficiently.

The last thing corporations want are informed customers, because informed customers make rational decisions, rather than irrational ones that net big profits for the corporation. Tricking the customer is fair play in today's "free market".

But that aside, you're also a nitwit for assuming that an ignorant or uninformed person is the same thing as an idiot.

>>3965579
>>3965582
we need people like you representing those hipsters at occupy wallstreet. most of them out there have no clue what they are talking about and are simply following a "cool" trend. you, however, seem to actually understand where social problems arise and not just point them out and complain.

>>3965910
>In a market where the corporations are absolutely and totally free from regulation, they regulate themselves by introducing barriers to entry in the market.
>Such barriers can range from any number of things, for instance, having enough guns to kill anyone who tries to enter your market.

Nope. It isn't economically efficient to do this, so it doesn't happen. It is only economically efficient to buy off (AKA bribe) the current power structure (AKA the government). The government has all the guns they need as the government can take money by force.

>Regulation, however, DOES.

I love how you brag about the efficacy of regulation and then immediately torpedo your own argument by explaining regulatory capture. I don't even have to argue; you already exploded your own argument so thoroughly.

>>3965944
>A free market requires a fully informed customer in order to function efficiently.

Fully informed customers tend to do better than less informed ones, but this does not mean that a free market system can't function in an absence of perfect information.

>Tricking the customer is fair play in today's "free market".

So inform yourself? I don't understand why this has to be so difficult. I also don't understand why you refer to the current system as "free market".

>>3966233
> It isn't economically efficient to do this, so it doesn't happen.
I love free markets as much as the next guy, but this is hopelessly naive and you should really feel bad.

Bump for E̶R̶G̶O̶N̶O̶M̶I̶C̶S̶!̶ ECONOMICS!