Slashdot Mirror

Scene from Wendy's:

Customer walks to the counter and order's a burger. Wendy's business model says the customer should pay and the customer does and enjoys the burger.

Wendy's goes to the BEEF supplier and says: Where's the BEEF? We need more! The Beef supplier complies. Wendy's hands them a bill and tries to walk off with the BEEF. Wendy's figures they are just providing a BEEF distribution service.

What most people don't know is that this happened to my Grandfather during the Great Depression. He was a Saskatchewan farmer and shipped a calf to Toronto. They sent him a bill because the calf didn't fetch enough to cover the transportation costs.

My Grandfather shipped no more calves to Toronto. Maybe some people in Toronto went to bed hungry.

In fact the telecommunications industry has been double dipping for YEARS. Google may well be able to negotiate a peering arrangement. The VAST MAJORITY of companies that provide internet content are NOT in a position to peer. So they pay for the privilege of providing free content for the telecommunications industry and clients who are often mum and pop ISP's.

Google might have enough clout to fight this. Most content suppliers have no chance. This is a very unfair business model. The ones who pay the price are the consumers who might be missing out on websites created by some very talented people. Then we have web masters and graphics artists many of whom spend a great deal of time and money one school and tuition while learning their craft. They are looking for careers that might not materialize.

How many people remember the Dot.Com Bubble? For those interested in economics I'll provide this link to Eric Janszen's website: http://www.itulip.com/ Eric writes of the technology bubble in a number of articles.

Eric writes that the action of the FED after the technology bubble burst leads directly to the housing bubble and the present recession. The issue is that a lot of the reason the tech bubble burst is _because_ there was no workable business model. Companies that tried to create internet content went bankrupt.

Look here: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/0081908

How many billions of dollars were lost by investors as the internet unfolded and the dream of "if we build it they will come" unfolded? Well - we did come. Unfortunately there was no money in it for those who were living the dream!

I say the greed of the telecommunications oligopoly had a lot to do with this.

Scene from Wendy's:

Customer walks to the counter and order's a burger. Wendy's business model says the customer should pay and the customer does and enjoys the burger.

Wendy's goes to the BEEF supplier and says: Where's the BEEF? We need more! The Beef supplier complies. Wendy's hands them a bill and tries to walk off with the BEEF. Wendy's figures they are just providing a BEEF distribution service.

What most people don't know is that this happened to my Grandfather during the Great Depression. He was a Saskatchewan farmer and shipped a calf to Toronto. They sent him a bill because the calf didn't fetch enough to cover the transportation costs.

My Grandfather shipped no more calves to Toronto. Maybe some people in Toronto went to bed hungry.

In fact the telecommunications industry has been double dipping for YEARS. Google may well be able to negotiate a peering arrangement. The VAST MAJORITY of companies that provide internet content are NOT in a position to peer. So they pay for the privilege of providing free content for the telecommunications industry and clients who are often mum and pop ISP's.

Google might have enough clout to fight this. Most content suppliers have no chance. This is a very unfair business model. The ones who pay the price are the consumers who might be missing out on websites created by some very talented people. Then we have web masters and graphics artists many of whom spend a great deal of time and money one school and tuition while learning their craft. They are looking for careers that might not materialize.

How many people remember the Dot.Com Bubble? For those interested in economics I'll provide this link to Eric Janszen's website: http://www.itulip.com/ Eric writes of the technology bubble in a number of articles.

Eric writes that the action of the FED after the technology bubble burst leads directly to the housing bubble and the present recession. The issue is that a lot of the reason the tech bubble burst is _because_ there was no workable business model. Companies that tried to create internet content went bankrupt.

Look here: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/0081908

How many billions of dollars were lost by investors as the internet unfolded and the dream of "if we build it they will come" unfolded? Well - we did come. Unfortunately there was no money in it for those who were living the dream!

I say the greed of the telecommunications oligopoly had a lot to do with this.

Response to Mish's deflation case

Hey, while we're talking about bubble blogs, check out the dady of them all http://itulip.com/. They predicted the tech bubble and realestate bubble. Now they are calling for the dollar bubble to burst.

Whatever happened to taking personal responsibility for one's own actions?? You can't just blow it off with some quasi-bullshit rhetoric. IT IS NOT THE FAULT OF ANY FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS that Americans are fat. Haven't you heard of the basic pricinple of supply and demand?? If there is a demand for something, then someone will supply it. Cutting of the supplier doesn't work (see prohibition or the "War on Drugs" for proof)- cutting out the demand will.
And please don't suggest class action lawsuits against all companies you think are "murdering" American citizens. Lawsuits are never the answer - they are playing the ultimate "pass the buck" blame game (and do nothing to stop the problem). As long as you keep trying to blame fast food suppliers as the root of the problem, you are attacking the wrong enemy. You were more on track when you were talking about education and not trying to point fingers. Who cares what trying to assign fault to the problem, let's concentrate on fixing it. If people knew more about nutrition, the McDonalds and Burger Kings will fall to the wayside naturally...

And China invading the US?? (and because we are fat???) That would shoot them in the foot so bad economically that we wouldn't need to use any military force to beat them. Where do you think 80% of their exports are sold?? (Besides, the Walton family http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart would never allow that to happen...) The US and China economies are so dependent on each other's to keep going that neither could realisticlly invade the other. See here http://www.itulip.com/economicMAD.htm for a better explanation of this...

It would be a lot easier to stop this bankruptcy bill than it will be to undo it though. I recommend contacting your Senator.

Lots of comments, but no mention of http://www.itulip.com yet....