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Voyager 1 Exits Our Solar System
eldavojohn writes "The first man-made craft to do so is now entering a 'cosmic purgatory' between solar systems and entering an interstellar space of the Milky Way Galaxy. With much anticipation, Voyager 1 is now 'in a stagnation region in the outermost layer of the bubble around our solar system. Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back.' After three decades the spacecraft is still operating and apparently has enough power and fuel to continue to do so until 2020. The first big piece of news? 'We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity. We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically. For the first time, the wind even blows back at us. We are evidently traveling in completely new territory. Scientists had suggested previously that there might be a stagnation layer, but we weren't sure it existed until now.' This process could take months to years to completely leave the outer shell but already scientists are receiving valuable information."
It is just freaking amazing that things electronics can still work after being exposed to such an environment for so long. Good job Voyager and good job old school NASA. Just don't come back home in a few hundred years with a chip on your shoulder!
Wasn't the Oort cloud supposed to be the edge of the Solar System, and that's still a few trillion miles off.
Voyager 1 is travelling at just under 11 miles per second and sending information from nearly 11 billion miles away from the sun.
This reminds me of just how big space is. What absurd distances we're talking about now. I can't be but at awe and terror when I think of the stars.
It's really really cool that Voyager is still going, but this talk of crossing into the heliosheath, etc seems to be dragged out a bit (yes, it's a vague and slow transition, I understand...)
http://science.slashdot.org/story/05/05/24/2334240/voyager-1-crosses-the-termination-shock
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/12/02/0243246/voyager-probes-give-us-ets-view
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/12/14/1451216/voyager-1-beyond-solar-wind
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/04/28/2314203/voyager-set-to-enter-interstellar-space
It's too bad so many people here were born or grew up after 1990, at which point most American industry had been decimated and sent over to third-world shit heaps like China, India, and Mexico.
You people will never realize that American-manufactured goods were once the best there were. They were durable, they actually weren't that expensive, and you could trust them.
Then globalization and so-called "free trade" happened to ruin all of that. Products that you could once buy from an American manufacturer and you'd know they'd work perfectly for decades could now only be obtained from third-world manufacturers. Of course, they skimped on just about every aspect to make the product as cheap as possible. American-made equivalents would have lasted for many years, while these third-world manufactures often break after two or three uses!
But since the American industry has been destroyed, it's not even possible to buy American-made goods even if you wanted to. You're stuck buying shitty foreign products.
Here's a nice picture
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
They are hoping to get data on spectral lines not visible from within the solar system, with Voyager 1 now outside the solar system, but they're running into power budget issues. The battery is very, very low on juice, and with AAA not operating that far out, there's no chance of it getting any more. Data collected will therefore be rather more limited than NASA would like, but since existent data is zero any data will be an improvement.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
With updated equipment, high resolution sensors/ cameras.... heck even put on a hubble like telescope while we're at it... a dozen of these in all directions.... that would definitely kick ass... >
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
I read this and I got chills. This is amazing to think that we, even if we ourselves physically have done it have left our solar system. This to me is my moon landing I can't wait to hear what they find once they pass the bubble shell.
lets face facts. they only outsourced for two main reasons.
number 1, to avoid the EPA
number 2, to avoid labor unions
all of that 'classic american technology' was built with union hands and by people paying union dues. they went on something called a 'strike' once in a while, too. fascinating concept - you stop working in order to improve conditions and pressure employers.
The amazing thing (well, one of the amazing things) about the Voyager program is the communication link. Voyager's signal, as received on Earth, is almost unbelievably weak.
One can use the Friis Transmission Equation to see just how weak the signal from Voyager 1 is at the moment:
Pr = Pt * Gt * Gr * (lambda/(4 * pi * R))^2, where
Pr is received power, in watts;
Pt is transmitted power, in watts;
Gt is the gain of the transmitting antenna, relative to an isotropic source (a unit-less value);
Gr is the gain of the receiving antenna (one of the 70m DSN antennas), relative to an isotropic source (a unit-less value);
lambda is the operating wavelength, in meters, and equal to c/f, or very close to 300/fM, where fM is the operating frequency in MHz;
and R is the range (distance) in meters.
Pt = 18 watts (assuming this hasn't degraded over time and distance);
Gt = 48 dBi, or about 63100;
Gr = 74 dBi, or about 25.1*10^6;
fM = 8420 MHz, so lambda = 300/fM = 0.0356 meters; and
R = 17,545,000,000 km, or 1.75 * 10^13 meters.
Grinding all this out, one is left with a received signal strength -- at the terminals of a 70-meter dish, mind you -- of:
Pr = 18 * 63100 * 25.1*10^6 * (0.0356/(4 * pi * 1.75 * 10^13))^2 = 7.45 * 10^(-19) watts, or 745 -- wait for it -- zeptowatts.
This is equal to -181.3 dBW, or -151.3 dBm. (I don't know how many Libraries of Congress that is.)
In the year 2020, when the probe's power generator is expected to expire, the probe will be about 2 * 10^13 meters away from Earth; using the same calculation the signal will have weakened slightly, to 5.73 * 10^(-19) watts, or 573 zeptowatts, -182.4 dBW, or -152.4 dBm.
(Unless I've made some trivial calculation error, of course.)
otherwise, the only thing we would ever spend money on is bailing out big corporations and bombing people.
Are Voyager 1 & 2 the only space crafts to venture this far out? Did the Russian's launch anything similar?
The bombing people part involves paying big corporations for the bombs (and the vehicles used to deliver them) with lots of tax payer money anyway, so that's sort of a bail out too.
'We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity. We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically. For the first time, the wind even blows back at us.
Arrrgh, trim yer sails, and steady on, mate.
Next fortnight we shall leave the solar system and finally escape from the RIAA.
Of course, it would travel well with a name like 'Voyager'. It is not like we had called it Phobos-Grunt. I mean, come on, phobos means 'fear' in Greek. And grunt, well, that just does not sound good.
Are you a communist?
He's a realist. I've still got an HP 11C (made in the USA), bought it almost 30 years ago.
Its still going strong and boy do the batteries last. A pair of button batteries could last for 10/15 years of use. But that was a time when American industries acutally produced things, and management was not ruled by a band of legalised criminals.
While that's true for many types of things, ABC News has been doing a Made in America series for most of this year. (I've only seen a few of the reports when reaired on World News Now.) They've found lots of things made in America, and some was cheaper than the foreign made stuff. I don't remember all of the examples, but toys, furniture, cooking implements were some of them. (The most recent report I saw was a followup where the Bundt pan factory hired a few more people, at least partially because sales had gone way up since the last report.)
As others have said in past discussions of this type, what do you call a Toyota made (assembled/built) in Kentucky? Is that an American car or a foreign car?
I disagree with your main premise, but if you want "American made", you can find it, at least for many things.. but you'll sometimes have to pay more, and definitely will have to look harder.
Products that you could once buy from an American manufacturer and you'd know they'd work perfectly for decades could now only be obtained from third-world manufacturers.
You mean, like American cars in the 80s? I used to see quite a few of those clunkers when I first came to the US, and their lack of quality was shocking.
Face it, American products had gone down the shitter a long time before NAFTA. I think this might be the equivalent of the uphill, through the snow, both ways stories old people tell.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I'm pretty excited for when Voyager crashes into the wall at the edge of creation. Then all the angels will fly in and all the sinners who believe in dinosaurs will be SOORRRY.
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You people will never realize that American-manufactured goods were once the best there were. They were durable, they actually weren't that expensive, and you could trust them.
Any facts or figures to back up this hyperbole of a statement ?
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its a foreign car because the profit goes over seas and is invested there.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Are you a communist?
He's a realist. I've still got an HP 11C (made in the USA), bought it almost 30 years ago.
Its still going strong and boy do the batteries last. A pair of button batteries could last for 10/15 years of use. But that was a time when American industries acutally produced things, and management was not ruled by a band of legalised criminals.
While the rest of what you say might be true, management has *always* been ruled by a band of legalised criminals. Globalization has merely provided them with the means to dare what they wouldn't have gotten away with before.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
And 20+ years later many of them are still on the road.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
lets face facts. they only outsourced for two main reasons.
number 1, to avoid the EPA
number 2, to avoid labor unions
all of that 'classic american technology' was built with union hands and by people paying union dues. they went on something called a 'strike' once in a while, too. fascinating concept - you stop working in order to improve conditions and pressure employers.
You are not facing facts. The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing. Consumers selected goods based on one and only one criteria: retail price. When presented with a high quality US made product and a less expensive foreign made product the US consumers overwhelmingly chose the foreign made good. It wasn't the CEOs, the 1%, etc. The 99% did it to themselves. Corporations don't care where things are made, only that they sell, and consumers chose what sells and what does not. Corporate greed can lead to domestic manufacture just as easily as it can lead to foreign manufacture, it just depends on US consumers favoring domestic production over retail price. Assuming you are a US citizen and you need a flashlight for your car, there is a $20 US made Maglite next to a $7 chinese made brand, what do you chose? What does your choice tell the Maglite CEO to do?
Unions knew this too. There was no shortage of "Save a Job, Buy American" bumper stickers in the 1970s. US Consumers didn't care, a classic example of tragedy of the commons.
Fortunately the internet has made it easier to find US made goods than one might expect by browsing local brick and mortar establishments.
Like American cars, whose quality has vastly increased since 1990?
Or a 1980s Zenith TV compared to Sony?
As for it being impossible to buy American-made goods, the CPUs in my desktops and laptops were all fabbed in the United States in Oregon and Arizona, my car was built in the United States and is 93% American made parts, my pickup was made in Canada, but the engine, transmission and frame were all built in the United States and it's still over 75% American parts.
The airplanes I fly out of Alaska on are all made in the United States with American made engines.
Then by that logic, products made by American companies in other countries should count as "American made".
Sounds to me like American goods were once like Chinese goods are becoming right now. Seriously, the jokes about Chinese goods being crap is showing its' age.
It pains me to think about it, but if I had to bet my pension on either the Americans or the Chinese building a successor to Voyager, I would go all in on the Chinese.
Whatever. I distinctly remember from Back to the Future that all the best stuff is made in Japan. And that was in 1985, so there!
... it's not even possible to buy American-made goods even if you wanted to. You're stuck buying shitty foreign products ...
Try googling "Made in USA".
And when on a particular website see if "Made in USA" is one of the search filters: http://www.rei.com/search?search=Made+in+the+USA. Look at the categories and item counts on the left of this page.
I don't know where you are, but where I live most 80's vintage American cars don't appear to be in very good shape (paint jobs appear to be particularly bad quality in the 80s). There's a big difference between "still on the road" and "safely, reliably and comfortably still on the road". Still running is not a sign of quality.
America invented disposable razors. It was an American idea to make things disposable.
truth be told, a lot of the profit is invested where the car was made - people need to be paid, machines need to be maintained/replaced.
it's not as good as made and owned, but really, what's the difference between a rich person in Japan and a rich person in the USA? the bulk of the good comes from local manufacture. you can see this from the proliferation of USA companies that manufacture overseas - how much are they contributing to life in the USA?
Its last message was, oddly enough, "So long and thanks for all the fish".
You people will never realize that American-manufactured goods were once the best there were. They were durable, they actually weren't that expensive, and you could trust them.
I think you misspelled German. =)
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
The successor to Voyager I was built a few years ago -- it's called New Horizons. Launched in 2006 and halfway to Pluto right now. Proudly Made in USA. Tell me about superior Chinese tech when they send something to Pluto.
"The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing" The US is still ranked the #1 manufacturer in the world.
I'd love to see that stats, but I'd bet the same proportion of foreign cars are on the roads as American ones of a given model year. My personal impression of foreign cars of that era was that they might have been more reliable, but when the broke down, they went down hard. I just bought a Korean made Hyundai, and the initial quality is great, but I can see how it might not last the 15 years the Pontiac it replaced did. Note: this may be the state of ALL cars now, I haven't gotten my hands on a GM or Ford lately.
That's the thing: we STILL make good products. We just gave up on a lot of the cheap shit because we got out-competed by foreigners who figured out how to manufacture stuff cheaper, or had people living in mud huts who were happy to work for less than we spend on lunch.
Meanwhile, many other countries were busy making people disposable.
They are entering the slow zone!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Toss-up and slam-dunk.
The general DSN site is here; however, for detail on the system hardware, services, and capabilities, see the 810-5 Handbook.
War was pretty much the first form of economic bailout ever invented!
"The fact is that consumers killed US manufacturing" The US is still ranked the #1 manufacturer in the world.
Stats that make that claim usually compare dollar amounts. So extremely high priced products like jet liners, heavy caterpillar tractors, etc distort the numbers and do not reflect huge number of manufacturing jobs that have been exported. These products merely represent the heavy high tech manufacturing which is the last to go and is currently targeted for the next round of job exporting.
These dollar based stats also show that we are just about to fall from that #1 position. You should look at the historical trend and not look at the current stat out of context.
I live in Michigan. My car was assembled in Michigan less than 50 miles away from me. I support my local products such as Better Made chips and Faygo pop, and I support local Michigan stores. As long as we are all tooting our horn here. Sorry about that last part, but I do agree that everybody should be buying more locally made products that don't need to be shipped halfway across the world.
It doesn't matter how cheap those CRTs were, with color calibration they would have given you a better color representation than the TFTs you used to replace them. That is unless you bought some IPS panel TFTs, but I doubt you'd pick those up cheap on cyber monday. I don't use them a lot, but I still have the broadcast quality proofing CRTs gifted to me a while back for the true color work.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
While money is one metric of the stats it also uses the amount of goods exported. If the Chinese or any other country was ranked #1 I seriously doubt you would not be making the same judgements you apply to the US.
Really? There was a time when the US made essentially everything. And did it cheaply and with good quality.
Of course essentially every factory in Germany had been blown up in a little thing called WW2 shortly before that - and a similar thing with most other manufacturing centers outside the US.
Post the 1960s is a whole different story of course.
Mercedes had a long stretch in the 90s when their quality was crap.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
While money is one metric of the stats it also uses the amount of goods exported.
I'd like to see such stats regarding the amount of goods. The products found in Walmart, Target, Toys R Us, brick and mortars around the country, Amazon, etc suggest otherwise. As do the shuttered factories across the country.
If the Chinese or any other country was ranked #1 I seriously doubt you would not be making the same judgements you apply to the US.
How is that? My judgment is that US consumers are responsible for the offshoring of formerly US based manufacturing due to purchasing decisions being made on no other criteria beyond price.
New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006, directly into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory with an Earth-relative velocity of about 16.26 km/s (58,536 km/h; 36,373 mph) after its last engine shut down. Thus, the spacecraft left Earth at the greatest ever launch speed for a man-made object. It flew by Jupiter on February 28, 2007, the orbit of Saturn on June 8, 2008; and the orbit of Uranus on March 18, 2011. (Source: Wikipedia)
Nice!
What, when Chrysler were involved?
Ydco co
That's only about 2 weeks in Iraq/Afghanistan.
I think you misspelled Swiss. Oh wait, you said "actually weren't that expensive". Nevermind :)
yes, then!
Anyplace interesting? Did we point it at something specific?
Not true. The most important rule of market economy is to maximise profits. Moving manufacturing to cheaper countries helps maximising profits. This has got nothing to do with the customers bying the cheapest option, as the price of Nike sneakers shows you - they are quite expensive and still are made in Vietnam. Passing the lower production price to the customer happens only if the manufacturer is convinced that lower margins will be balanced by more units sold.
The more expensive Maglite is still being sold because it caters to a different target market than a chinese made brand. If the Maglite CEO could achieve higher profits by manufacturing in China, he would already have moved the production base there.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Watch out for the Kazon. And the Vidiians. And species 8472. And the Borg.
And that is a symptom of one of my pet peeves - the lack of modular design in most modern hard goods.
There is no reason why major subsystems couldn't be built to a common form factor so they could be easily serviced and/or upgraded as improvements are developed. Why shouldn't that old, durable fridge be retrofit with a high-efficiency compressor, upgrading it to modern energy standards at a fraction of the price (and cost of disposal?)
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
That's why we killed the Voyager program after only two probes, because of the documentary that fell back through time to us giving the ultimate fate of Voyager 6.
I would hardly say many of them. The ones I see are either collector ones, or look like they are fogging mosquitoes as they go down the road. American cars from the 80s really were junk (maybe not late 80s but defiantly the early and mid). The Japanese were competing on quality and the Americans we for cost. I see more older Hondas and Toyotas than I do older Fords, Chevrolets, and Chryslers. This changed in the possibly the late 80s and for sure by the early 90s when we started making decent cars again since the Big Three discovered that people want quality.
Time to offend someone
And Marty was saying that to the 1955 Doc Brown who said something along the lines of "no wonder this chip failed it is made in Japan". Interesting thing is that in the 50s and 60s people viewed Japanese goods like we currently view Chinese goods. A side note if you find a Japanese tin toy form that era in working order at a garage sale buy it, it is probably worth something, even more if it was made in "Occupied Japan".
Time to offend someone
You ask that as if it's a negative.
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its a foreign car because the profit goes over seas and is invested there.
...after paying for American workers in American buildings on taxable American soil. When Toyota makes a van in Kentucky, all the labor and most of the manufacturing overhead stay in America, while some of the profits go to Japan and some go to stockholders in the form of their semi-annual dividend payments. Of those segments, overhead covers the huge portion of a vehicle's costs. I don't know what Toyota's profit margins are, but I'd bet at least 90% of the dealer price goes to manufacturing overhead.
When GM makes an Escalade in Mexico, that 90% of the overhead goes to Mexican employees and property costs, while the 10% (maybe) profit margin comes back to America.
I'd just as soon pay American employees that 90% overhead, so I bought an American Toyota.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
... and so many people are driving them (90s models) now acting like they're hot shit... at least around here hah.
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I agree with you except for items made exclusively in Japan. (ones with not much if any competition in the States) :(
Japan has American quality nowadays, it seems. I've had Japanese sportbikes that blew my mind on the engineering and quality. My Prius is stellar in quality of engineering. I'm saddened there's little to no viable competition in those two arenas in the States
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Funny, every other time I remember the talk being about it's existence near the border, and experiencing the energy barrier.
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Not true. The most important rule of market economy is to maximise profits. Moving manufacturing to cheaper countries helps maximising profits. This has got nothing to do with the customers bying the cheapest option ...
You are terribly mistaken. Profits are dependent upon sales and consumers decide what sells. Maximizing profits, corporate greed, etc can lead to either domestic manufacture or overseas manufacture. It all depends on consumer preferences. If consumers value domestic manufacture more than retail price and buy accordingly then maximizing profits leads to domestic manufacture. Consumers drive the system, they control the system.
... The more expensive Maglite is still being sold because it caters to a different target market than a chinese made brand. If the Maglite CEO could achieve higher profits by manufacturing in China, he would already have moved the production base there.
No. Sometimes ethics and patriotism prevail. "Why Mag Instrument is against "outsourcing" of flashlight manufacturing jobs: It's a curious thing: While its competitors in the flashlight industry are busy exporting manufacturing jobs from the United States, Mag Instrument is busy exporting flashlights from the United States. Why? The answer, again, comes down to one man's abiding commitment. To "outsource" flashlight manufacturing jobs -- to take those jobs away from American workers and send them "offshore" -- would violate Tony Maglica's philosophy in several ways."
http://www.maglite.com/Mag_commitment.asp
The profit is owned by the company, and the company is owned by the shareholders. IBM could have more shareholders in Germany than the US and would still count as an American company, while Toyota could have most of its shares held by Americans, with its cars being manufactured in Tennessee, and stll be a Japanese company.
There are no more Anerican corporations, no more Japanese corporations. The corporate world is multinational these days.
Personally, I don't which country's rich parasites get the profits, I want Americans to have the jobs. A rich American doesn't help America any more than a rich Italian does.
Free Martian Whores!
We should call this The Soldrums.
One of those shows had a university-sponsored list of items sold in their bookstore for dorms; sheets, blankets, pillows, drapes, cleaning supplies, etc. ABC news found the same list of goods made in the US for cheaper than the university sponsored foreign items.
The problem is that few if any of our rich are patriots who give two shits for their country or its citizens, including University Presidents.
Free Martian Whores!
Do your own research. The info is easy to find and is from multiple sources.
My mother - who is in her 80s - has some kitchen appliances that belonged to her mother and were made in the 1920s or 1930s. They still work and she still uses them.
I doubt our own mixer - a Kitchen-Aid that was over $200 - will last that long, although it might surprise me. I bet my mom's mixer will still be working when I'm in my 80s. Will probably pass it down to one of my kids. That wasn't some hugely expensive mixer, either. My maternal grandmother came from a lower-middle class family, only a generation or two removed from the immigrant generation. She could speak some German that she learned when she was little.
A lot of Chinese stuff still is just the lowest-quality garbage you'd ever not want to see, but yeah, some of it is pretty good. More than a little of the Taiwanese electronics industry has re-outsourced to the Chinese mainland and the quality is good. I expect China to move toward quality in more markets in the coming decade.
I had to scroll down this far to find a Vger reference?!?!
These young whippersnappers!
My younger brother, one of our friends, and I ditched school to see first Star Trek movie on opening day. Amazingly, none of us got caught.
Do your own research. The info is easy to find and is from multiple sources.
I did. And the stats that I found were as I described, based on dollar amounts. I did not see similar claims based upon amount of goods (note "goods" not "food") exported, as you claimed. Its your claim, the burden is upon you. I expect that you mistakenly referred to something that included agricultural exports.
Let's see if I understand: consumers should've factored in the long-term economic disadvantages of buying cheap, foreign goods into their buying decisions, because they should have the common good in mind and understand the complete supply chain. Companies selling the good, though, should not do this; they should source parts as cheaply as possible.
You failed to understand. Companies favor neither domestic nor foreign manufacture. They follow whatever path the consumer chooses. If they do not the company goes out of business as their sales disappear. The consumer controls manufacturing. If the consumer rewards domestic manufacturers with sales then those companies who experiment with foreign manufacturing fail. If consumers reward foreign manufacturing with sales then those still using domestic manufacturing fail. Where did business have a choice in this matter? Only consumers have the choice.
Maybe instead, we should've gotten together, collectively, and taxed or otherwise adjusted market prices to reflect the long-term cost of foreign goods, and let the market work as usual, ...
Again, your understanding fails. When we erect such barriers then those overseas erect retaliatory barriers. That harms those goods and agriculture that were still being exported. The naive path you suggest is one tried during the great depression, it made things worse.
Your claim of scapegoating fails by your own argument. By claiming that trade barriers should have been erected you are admitting that consumers could not be trusted to make the long term economically sound decision.
Natural market forces killed (or hurt, to be less hyperbolic) manufacturing in the US (cheap, exploitable labor elsewhere, and mobile capital). If we think these natural market forces are bad, like because the playing field for labor is not level, or we have humanitarian concerns about exploitation of workers elsewhere, we have to stand up and say so somehow. That's what we do through our gov't, and we have resoundingly chosen to profit from the cheap labor at the expense of US manufacturing.
Market forces, the invisible hand of the market, is not some outside force. It is the summation of billions of decisions made by consumers. This is where the true power lies. Better outcomes will be a result of a better informed consumer making better decisions.
I'm actually not even sure that's a bad thing, exactly, but to blame consumers or corporations for acting like they do in a free market is to abdicate responsibility as citizens for setting the market's ground rules correctly.
There is nothing anti-free market about a consumer choosing a short term negative / long term positive over a short term positive / long term negative. The free market does not *mandate* the tragedy of the commons.
No, I am not. But you have chosen to ignore my simple example of Nike sneakers because you don't want to have facts stand in the way of your beliefs.
That is what I was talking about - they cater to a different market - of naive nationalists. They aren't many, but they are willing to pay more, which leads to higher margins and lower investment needs (Maglite doesn't sell that much stuff compared to the cheap alternatives, so they don't need huge factories). This is a niche, though and if they fit this niche well - good for them. If you believe their marketing, then you probably also believe that yankees singlehandedly won the second world war.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
No, I am not. But you have chosen to ignore my simple example of Nike sneakers because you don't want to have facts stand in the way of your beliefs.
No, you really are mistaken. Whether the savings from reduced production costs are used to increase profit margins or to decrease retail prices is irrelevant. Both scenarios share the same fatal flaw. I thought that it would be apparent that the two scenarios would be interchangeable in this regard.
The flaw that both scenarios share is that they assume consumers have no preference for domestic production. If consumers prefer domestic production then foreign manufacture will kill sales. The company never gets to the point where it can increase margins or decrease prices.
The rule of the market economy is *not* to reduce production costs, it is to better meet consumer preferences than your competitors. If consumers prefer domestic manufacture then you do not off shore manufacturing.
Therefore the consumer controls whether or not production is domestic or foreign. Therefore the consumer is responsible for the offshoring of manufacturing. If decades ago consumers had not purchased that first model shoe that Nike offshored then Nike would have kept domestic production. If today consumers started switching to one of the New Balance shoes that are manufactured in the USA and if a preference for domestic manufacture was identified as the cause for the switch then Nike would probably experiment with a model manufactured in the USA to see how real the trend was. Consumers are in charge.
That is what I was talking about - they cater to a different market - of naive nationalists. They aren't many, but they are willing to pay more, ...
No, for some intended uses there is a preference for quality and reliability. The flashlight for the car is one example, when one is on an overnight camping trip is another, ... note that maglites are popular with police and the military. And with respect to the later I am not referring to government issued gear, I'm referring to something soldiers/marines are choosing to purchase as a personal item.
... which leads to higher margins ...
That is a gratuitous assumption. The higher prices may reflect the higher cost of domestic production (wages, environmental compliance, better materials, etc).
... and lower investment needs (Maglite doesn't sell that much stuff compared to the cheap alternatives, so they don't need huge factories).
Huge factories can exist anywhere. We've had them before.
This is a niche, though and if they fit this niche well - good for them.
That they serve a niche is irrelevant. My original question remains. When a consumer chooses the cheaper import what is the consumer telling the CEO to do if they want to grow, or maybe even survive in the long term? Again, the consumer is ultimately in charge.
Then we can talk.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
paying a manufacture for physical and functionally consumable goods is precisely not at all like a bail out.
It is if the goods are unneeded and are only being used to prop up the profits of the corporation.
It's like your mother buying 500 copies of that book you self-printed so you can pay your rent.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)