The real reason it costs so much less is that contributing to a 401k means that the money is removed from the regular revenue stream.
Pension payments and 401K payments are practically no different. A company that skimps on its pension fund also can find ways to delay their matching payments to 401K plans. The difference that pension plans include unknown costs in the future whereas a 401K has much more defined costs for the company.
The idiots at GM spent all the money that was supposed to be set aside for pensions which is why they are in so much trouble now.
You speak from ignorance. The idiots at GM committed entirely too much of their revenue to pensions, which left them with few options for growth. In the past 15 years, GM spent over $100 billion dollars on pension and retiree health care costs. GM did fall behind in payments earlier this decade but has tried to make up the difference the past few years, cash starving the business even further. This situation was created by the shortsightedness of the company and union leadership of the 50s and 60s.
401ks are far safer as employees and employers alike I believe have learned the lesson, plus 401ks are transferrable so if you lose your job after 28 years you don't risk your retirement.
401Ks offer lower benefit levels and are only as safe as your investment choices, the stability of your portfolio management company, and the national economy. However, I do agree that they are, generally, a better option for both sides in the long term simply because all of the company's retiree costs are paid for along the way.
Let's put this in context. "A generation or two of union costs on them" does not just appear out of nowhere. The company and the union had to *agree* to it.
Of course they did. I never suggested otherwise.
The difference between the US and the Japanese union legacy costs is that the Japanese, by law, had to actually (heaven forbid!) fund the benefits in advance, not just expect superprofits to cover this completely expected cost when it comes due. The US companies did not. The money that they should logically have set aside to fund the benefits, was instead thrown off as bonuses and dividends.
Any chance you have something to support your claims? I recall reading in the late 90s about Japan's struggles with their national pension plan because of their long-term economic slump and an aging population (sound familiar?). I believe that to combat future problems, they began cutting back from promised levels and increasing employee costs. (Here's the best I could find in 30 seconds on Google: http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v63n4/v63n4p99.pdf
How do you propose the large companies should fully fund the benefits in advance? On the day they hire an employee the company must deposit a check for the full cost of their pension assuming they work there until retirement age? Of course, they must somehow account for future inflation, increases in health care that outpace inflation, etc. Most companies with pension problems simply suffer from too many retirees compared to the current profit (exactly what Japan has been dealing with for at least 10 or 15 years).
I will grant you that, based upon my understanding of Japanese pension law, Toyota does seem to benefit compared to US companies because the Japanese government holds most pension responsibilities. I don't know enough to say how their national pension compares to US Social Security or GM's pension plans.
If the foreign manufacturers can find ways to keep health care costs under control they will continue to have a serious advantage over GM and Ford...
My brother works for a Toyota plant. They have a pharmacy on site where employees can get over the counter medicine for free. Toyota pays 100% of his monthly premium and his coverage is significantly better than any I've had anywhere I've worked. They already absorb much more of their employees' health care costs than most corporations, which they can do thanks to little retiree benefit costs right now.
...and be able to keep the "built in the USA" perception.
Perception? Their vehicles are "built in the USA" more so than the so-called American car companies.
Toyota does the same thing in the US. They pay union wages and union benefits in order to keep the union out. Some of their plants have unionized and Toyota is very careful to make sure that non-union plants keep pace with the wages and benefits of the union plants. If you are getting the same benefits without paying union dues, why would employees want a union? Makes sense on both sides as long as Toyota has a few union shops to keep them honest.
To be fair to GM and Ford, they have a generation or two of union costs on them that the new Toyota and Honda ventures do not. Let's see if the Asian manufactures can continue as they are now after they have as many US retirees as US employees. Maybe they can, but I'll be surprised.
Not necessarily. Many ISP:s ties the IP address allocation to the socket. It is quite common to do so for student apartments and dormitories. That is, the RIAA could prove, with the universitys help, which network socket the infringing file came from.
And how exactly does that help? Student housing generally has two to four people in the same room or suite, students sometimes provide their own WAP or wired switches, and students often share their computers with friends.
The most restrictive arrangements I encountered in over five years as a CIO in higher education was a college that required students to register their MAC address and tied it to the switch port, blocking all other traffic on that port. This arrangement is prone to MAC spoofing as well as a router or firewall that will NAT traffic from the room.
I know another college that went the other way and shared a single business-class cable connection across an entire dorm. I'm sure their upload rates were terrible, but they had more download bandwidth than the administration LAN. And, neither the school nor the ISP had any user-to-traffic logs available.
I'm not suggesting that a more airtight solution doesn't exist but colleges usually are concerned with network management, not with providing enough evidence to meet the standards of a civil lawsuit. As you make the process more restrictive, you increase the inconvenience to your end-users. As you increase the amount of useful data that you log, you increase the cost of providing network services.
You're taking the position that downloads are authorized unless the person making them available knows they're unauthorized.
You're mistaking the arguments of the record labels for the law. The "making available" argument is far from settled and is not obvious in the law. I'm taking the position that the public library did not infringe on copyrights if a patron makes copies of a book they borrow.
The law takes the position that downloads are unauthorized unless the person making them available either has permission themselves or knows that the person asking for the download is authorized.
This is blatantly false. I would strongly recommend that you read at least a Wikipedia article on copyright law before you get into arguments about it.
If you don't, then the copy you made for them was unauthorized as far as the court's concerned. The recipient may be authorized (by definition, as the copyright holder) to make copies, but he didn't make the copy, you did, and as far as you knew at the time you didn't have authorization.
Your arguments also make it obvious that you have no idea how file sharing works. If I have a file in my P2P client's shared folder, I'm not making a copy for each person. I have my own legal copy sitting there and other people may choose to make their own copy. Whether the downloader now has an authorized copy or not, I didn't make a copy for them.
Bad analogy. To be a parallel the driver would've had to have been speeding upon and after seeing the cop, in which case the cop doesn't need to make any claim about what the driver would've done had he not seen the cop.
What? This makes zero sense as an analogy here. Further, unless the cop observed the driver speeding he cannot write a ticket. He can't assume that the young guy in the sports car probably was speeding or likely will speed later, and issue him a ticket for it. Likewise, just because someone working for MediaSentry downloaded a copy, you have no grounds to assume that other people downloaded a copy before and after.
The violation isn't in receiving the copy, it's in making the copy without permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright law actually includes many cases where a legitimate copy does not require permission from the copyright holder.
When the copyright holder asks you to make him a copy, he has not implicitly granted you any permission because copyright law contains no implicit permissions beyond fair use. So if you make a copy for him, it's still an unauthorized copy (he never gave you permission to make it).
If the copyright holder asks you to him a copy, that is explicit permission. You're arguing that permission does not equal authorization? Seriously?
If you put an mp3 file up for download somewhere public (be it P2P, newsgroups, web, wherever) and accessible to the public in general, I'd say that you couldn't make a case in court that you really, honestly, expected the downloader to be the rights owner.
Read the GP's post again. He specifically said that intent to copyright isn't an issue. If you can't show that someone actually made an authorized copy of the material, then your already tenuous argument of "making available" has no legs. The record labels depend on downloads of authorized copies, so where is the actual infringement?
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The Pragmatic CSO
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The entire IT world currently exists for its own sake.
First, the argument is made in the context of the business world, not about what you do with your free time. Further, your whole comment reflects the conflicts in attitudes that the book is attempting to address. Too many individuals are unable to think outside of their silo, seeing themselves and their work as inherently important without considering the business goals and how they impact them. I've seen attitudes like yours ruin IT departments (and research departments, and facility service departments, and accounting departments, etc) as the department becomes a fiefdom concerned more with protecting and growing its kingdom. In most businesses, IT and all other ancillary departments, exist only to facilitate the primary business processes of the company.
I recently watched a large electric utility outsource their IT functions to EDS. This decision was made primarily because their IT structure was out of control and no one knew how to check it. Everyone in IT was transferred to EDS or they left the company altogether. In the two years since, EDS has trimmed the their staffing on the contract by at least 50%. My prediction is that in another year or two, the company will bring IT services back in house again and will do it with staffing about 25% of what it was before they outsourced. As an IT manager, I make sure that this isn't a good option for our department by communicating regularly with upper management, by always tying our work to company goals, by maintaining quality support, and by never allowing the department to become obviously overstaffed. IT employees who can't tie their toys to our goals do not survive in this culture.
This is just the level of ignorance politicians want you to have. Oh it costs ya a lot. If you bother to read any of the papers available about health care systems across the world it would open your eyes. ZERO OUTLAY... damn, next your going to believe that the roads are free too.
First, the GP clearly meant that he doesn't pay anything additional for the service. Discounting toll roads, you drive without any additional outlay. You've already paid for them when you filled your gas tank. Driving on a local, state, or federal highway doesn't cost extra. There is a difference between paying for the infrastructure and paying for each use, which is the point the GP seemed to be making.
Second, are you suggesting that the mess in the US is the most efficient means of providing health care, or simply arguing that no system is free? If the former, you failed to make the point. Duplication of services, for-profit providers, for-profit insurers, and for-profit medicine ensures inflated prices. The obvious result, and what is clearly demonstrated in the US, is that many individuals are priced out of the system. Even if you could show that other solutions are no more efficient, you still have to answer whether health care is less of a public service than transportation, electricity, water, sewage, trash pickup, fire fighting, police services, etc.
The fact that an OEM XP CD is marked 'not for resale' doesn't mean anything - as should have been proved by a recent court decision regarding music promo CDs, where the judge ruled that they were a gift and no longer the property of the record companies - who consequently had NO SAY over what was done with them (short of copyright laws and duplication).
If that's the case for gifts, where you've paid money for something, the case for right of resale would be even stronger.
The problem is that the buyer cannot legally use the product. The license agreement limits the use of OEM Windows to the hardware on which it was purchased.
It is illegal to resell old copies of Windows XP for use in new computers.
The right of first sale has been consistently upheld by every court decision I am aware of. Do you know something I don't?
The GP was incorrect in that it generally is not illegal to resell XP or other software. However, that is a bit misleading because most Windows licenses cannot be reused due to the terms of OEM OS licenses. The license is valid only on the computer with which it was sold so you're limited to selling only the boxed retail copies of Windows. Additionally, when the marketplace ignores the right of first sale (as eBay does), it make it difficult to sell the product even if you have the legal right to do so.
Even without those, however, most corporate customers have access through Microsoft to Windows XP under Open, Select, or Software Assurance licenses and if the Vista licenses that come with the computer fall under the terms of those agreements, they may legally downgrade.
The licenses that come with the computer are completely separate from Microsoft's volume licensing programs. Dell is selling you an OEM license for Vista that includes downgrade rights, which means you can run Windows Vista, XP, ME, 2000, 98, 95, or 3.1 on that particular computer (volume licensing is not tied to particular hardware). Large VARs and OEMs traditionally did not offer nor support any downgrade options themselves, but the corporate demand for XP over Vista created a significant enough market for some to offer it now. Whether you can get this on a home PC seems to depend on the salesperson you get (at least at Dell), with some offering it at no charge, some refusing to provide it even when requested, and others doing it for a $99 charge.
Why are we so intend to lynch their stooges when the masterminds are getting away scot-free? Are we just settling because we know they're above the law? Isn't there a bit of a double standard here?
The thing missed by all the telecom immunity apologists here is that this completely prevents any real investigation into the administration's program. Sure, the administration wants to make sure that the companies are protected financially but the real concern is that a lawsuit likely would result in documents being made public that the White House does not want seen. By barring these lawsuits, they have ensured that this cannot happen. By saying the immunity is "no big deal", you are supporting the keeping of these secrets and the obstruction of investigating or prosecuting those that you would call more guilty.
You continue to bounce back and forth between trying to argue economic principles and US constitutional law. You need to pick a position and defend it, not run in circles dodging bullets. If you are generally okay with state governments doing things then you are okay with governments doing it and your economic theory arguments go out the window.
No, I'm sick of listing things and then having you poke tiny linguistic holes in them...
I'm not poking tiny linguistic holes, I'm trying to tie you down to something and help you see the holes in your arguments. That's part of the debating thing you mentioned earlier.
Western Europe is hobbling along with little to no growth and a shrinking population while countries with low taxes and low regulation are growing and flourishing like Hong Kong, to some extent the United States & China.
The causes are much deeper than you apparently realize. Western Europe had its industrial revolution, polluted itself to death, established workers' rights and environmental regulations, outsourced everything, and became a nation of consumers. The US is approaching the end of that progression today. Third world countries with growing economies are just now experiencing their revolutions. They have little or no worker protection. They have few environment protections. They export much more than they import. India is seeing a slight decrease in growth as unemployment begins to drop, as the workforce becomes more educated, and as a middle class develops. Many companies simply move on, finding new places to exploit.
Actually, the word "liberal" has much meaning. When this country was founded it meant that someone was an advocate of freedom, small, decentralized government, and a government who in large part leaves citizens alone. Unfortunately its meaning has been twisted to mean nearly the opposite today, which seems to fit your opinions quite well.
First, the words are twisted by society (which today means the large media corporations). In the US, the word liberal has been turned into a slur by the Rush Limbaughs of the world, with no meaning other than "the bad guys". These same people have redefined conservative Republican to mean something completely opposed to what it represented only 20 years ago.
Second, I doubt you have little idea of my opinions. Forcing you to defend your arguments does not necessarily mean that I hold the views that you consider opposite yours.
My point is simply that since taxation is always coupled with government expenditure, the combination can only have the effect of transferring resources from where consumers wanted them to somewhere a bureaucrat or politicians wanted them. Don't try to refute this by saying "well if the government spends the resources where consumers want them, then it is ok," because as previously shown, this is impossible.
This argument is against government altogether. Any government other than an informal tribal council is going to require operating expenses, and taxation is the primary means for gathering them. Without taxation and government expenditures there are no police services, no fire departments, no court systems, no military, no laws, no anything. At this point in this discussion I doubt this is what you really mean, but it is what you are saying.
Why do you think private banks fail so much today? Because of the Federal Reserve system, (a disastrous creation of the Federal Government; also see: The Great Depression). However, I won't get into that; it's a debate for another time.
Before the time for that debate comes, I recommend you spend some time actually reading about banking. The Fed was created in an attempt to alleviate serious banking problems that were caused by the lack of coordinated central authority. As to why banks fail today, it is almost completely due to reckless investing by the banks, wh
Nationalization would be a way to replace a private monopoly with a government one. Hardly an improvement if eliminating monopolies is one's goal.
A private company exists to make a profit. Competition from other private companies balance the profit drive. A government exists to serve the people. The monopolies are apples and oranges.
Second, in the United States there is nothing about government-operated industries in the Constitution, which immediately makes illegitimate any federal ownership or operation of any industry.
If your claim was true, I guess you would claim the highway systems are unconstitutional? What about VA hospitals? What about the military itself, since this administration has proven that the US can rely on mercenaries for many things? However, the Constitution explicitly grants the USPS its nationalized status, so your claim is bunk anyway.
The extremely high fixed costs, barriers to entry, and general social benefits associated with industries like utilities justify/necessitate state/local government subsidization. However, once established, the government need not constantly interfere.
You believe that the government should help build the infrastructure then turn it over to private industry with little oversight? Seriously?
There are very, very few areas where government intervention in the private sector is legitimate.
Since you like to quote examples of failed government interventions, perhaps you could list a few successful free markets? Ones with little or no government intervention.
Show me a country where people starve in large numbers, and I'll show you a government that is corrupt, doesn't enforce private property rights, or takes a large quantity of its citizens' income.
Show me a government that isn't corrupt, truly respects private property rights, and doesn't tax too much.
The point was to illustrate how awful governments are at running industry, using historical facts instead of idealistic liberal rhetoric.
Applying meaningless labels to your opponent - is that standard debate tactics as well?
Usually in a debate it's a good idea to back up what one is claiming with facts and historical examples, and that's exactly what I did.
No, you haven't shown an example where the telecom infrastructure was nationalized in an otherwise quasi-capitalist society. And, you still haven't explained why US government control of the roads is okay and why it hasn't resulted in the failure of the US economy.
I just remembered another couple government corporations which have recently failed: Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. Maybe you've heard of them? If only the people running them were smarter, then maybe they wouldn't have failed. The solution to governmental failure certainly isn't privatization because government knows best how to handle people's mortgages. That's why governmental mortgage corporations don't fail. Oh wait
You really shouldn't go so far out on a limb when you have no idea what you're talking about. Although things are not looking good, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have not failed. Several private banks have failed this year, including IndyMac just last week. Further, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren't government corporations. Fannie Mae was a government agency with a monopoly in the secondary mortgage market, until it was privatized about 40 years ago. Freddie Mac was created (as a private corporation) to compete with Fannie Mae. Both are considered government-sponsored enterprises, but they get no funding or direct oversight from the government. In fact, they sound exactly like what you suggested for utilities way up in the top of this thread.
Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution...yada yada...Powers not granted to the Feder
Yes it is, because when the government breaks up a monopoly, competition is promoted. When industries are nationalized it virtually requires a government monopoly.
Nationalization would be another way to break up a monopoly. Utility infrastructure is a perfect example of a natural monopoly. If you are okay with semiprivate or subsidized utility companies then why is it so absurd to take it one step further and let the government manage the infrastructure? And, for someone promoting the so-called free market, you seem strangely okay with government meddling...
Regardless, this proves my point even more because it shows how awful the government is at planning & directing economic activity.
No, it is an anecdotal reflection of how one government managed their economic activity. You didn't address the point that people starve to death everywhere, nor how nationalizing the telecom infrastructure would cause mass starvation. Central control of the food supply is a much different beast than a utility infrastructure.
This is not true. Individual States own and operate most of the roads in the United States. The Federal Government owns and operates major interstate highways, I believe.
Do you not realize that individual states also are governments? And, you agree that the federal government controls significant infrastructure. I guess you would be okay with nationalized telecom if the state governments controlled most of the copper and fiber, and the federal government had a few interstate fiber runs? What are you even trying to say?
However, the idea of nationalizing telecoms is absurd.
It really is no more absurd that the government ordering the primary telecom company to break itself into pieces. Yet, the US did that.
Regarding your comment about free markets, I'm sure all the people who starved to death in Mao's China during the Great Leap Forward wouldn't agree that free markets are "bullshit" as you say.
Your argument is built on a false premise - there is no way to know that free markets would have prevented people in China from starving to death. The fact that they did in something other than a free market in no way validates your system. In fact, people starve to death in every country of the world.
Just look at all the historical examples of successful government controlled/owned industries where millions of people didn't starve to death. Oh wait...
The US government controls/owns most roads in the country, yet that doesn't cause people to starve to death. Do you imagine that nationalized telecom service would somehow make people starve? Really?
Why is it that so many executives feel the need to destroy a successful business model? Ebay started as an online auction house where individuals could find a worldwide audience for cool, quirky stuff, and it was wildly successful as such. If its executives want to start a site for selling commercial products with free-floating prices -- which is essentially what they're turning Ebay into -- then fine, but why are they abandoning the business that made them successful in the first place? Ebay was one of the few real success stories to come out of the dot-com boom. It's really sad to see them throwing that away now.
Some of it is simply natural business processes - as eBay was more successful it attracted larger sellers. By tying the all-important reputation to the number of transactions completed, these large sellers quickly gained an advantage. As a business, eBay no doubt gets more money (and a more stable income) from large sellers than a collection of grandmas selling their Tupperware.
eBay was wonderful back in the day, but has been on the decline for years. They've made decisions that increasingly shut out the individual reselling used items, which once formed the core of their business. The eBay of today hardly resembles the place where I bought a used guitar in 1998. I looked through a few hundred guitars each week, nearly all of which were used instruments listed by an individual. Now you're likely to find ten times the number of guitars but 90% or more will be listed by a wholesaler or huge pawn shop. Some of it was to be expected - as eBay succeeded it attracted more businesses that could do more volume than any individual, and directly tying an individual's reputation to the number of transactions benefited those large sellers.
However, the seller policies were modified over the years in ways that benefited the larger sellers. For example, many small sellers left when eBay wholesale surrendered to big business efforts to ignore the legal rights protected by the first-sale doctrine. My smart-card programmer listing was pulled without explanation, which I finally figured out was apparently due to DirectTV claiming that it could be used to "hack" their equipment.
Unfortunately, each time I looked, I found no viable alternative. There are plenty of small auction sites, but none with a fraction of the buyers and/or the buyer and seller protections offered by eBay. Has the Web simply been too commercialized now for someone to make a new eBay that caters to individuals again?
Ignoring your "free market is God" bullshit, let's think logically about this particular situation. The infrastructure required for a public utility is very expensive and the ROI is significantly smaller for each player after the first. This is a market that almost guarantees a monopoly or duopoly. Capitalism is good for consumers only when there is competition.
What are you smoking? The electric companies are the telcos' and cable companies' wet dream. What do you think Enron was? That's right it was primarily an electricity and gas company.
Enron was a product of a partially (and terribly flawed) deregulated electric market. Their antics would not have been possible in the fully regulated markets in most US states.
I was interested in FIOS speeds a little, but I discovered that they would be cutting the independently-powered copper and replacing it with an 8-hour battery on the wall of the house.
Verizon removes the copper because they are required to provide other carriers access to their copper but not to their fiber. And, they lock you into their higher-priced service. If you want traditional services down the road, Verizon will charge you to reinstall the copper (if they will do it at all).
It is time to face up to the reality, that no legal sheet of paper can stop a foreign government from tapping. Suits like this one, falsely encourage people to believe that legal pieces of paper can keep their phone conversations safe.
This has nothing to do with foreign governments. You are attempting to muddy the waters with arguments unrelated to the issue at hand.
Foreign governments and criminal organizations do not care what laws congress and the courts create.
So, into which category do you put the current administration? I vote for the second.
And that, ladies gentlemen and geek masses, is just one reason why the "...to overthrow the government if they turn into a tyranny!" argument in support of the 2nd Amendment is baloney. Try it and see whether the general public see you as a terrorist or a patriot.
First, just because things aren't bad enough yet doesn't mean they can't get there. Second, it doesn't have to be a full-scale revolution against the federal government to be effective. When the federal government refused to assist the locals in Athens, Georgia, they used force to remove the corruption from their county government (see http://www.constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen.htm for example).
Oh yeah, and even if you DID somehow manage to raise a large, angry mob of enraged disenchanted ex-mainstreamers, how well d'you think you'd do against a modern military?
Perhaps Iraq could serve as a good example? With a small population of anti-US revolutionaries and a portion of the population quietly in support, they have inflicted thousands of casualties on the best military money can buy.
And, just because you are uncomfortable with the thought of protecting yourself against an oppressive government, you ought not take that right from others who are willing to fight for their liberty.
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The real reason it costs so much less is that contributing to a 401k means that the money is removed from the regular revenue stream.
Pension payments and 401K payments are practically no different. A company that skimps on its pension fund also can find ways to delay their matching payments to 401K plans. The difference that pension plans include unknown costs in the future whereas a 401K has much more defined costs for the company.
The idiots at GM spent all the money that was supposed to be set aside for pensions which is why they are in so much trouble now.
You speak from ignorance. The idiots at GM committed entirely too much of their revenue to pensions, which left them with few options for growth. In the past 15 years, GM spent over $100 billion dollars on pension and retiree health care costs. GM did fall behind in payments earlier this decade but has tried to make up the difference the past few years, cash starving the business even further. This situation was created by the shortsightedness of the company and union leadership of the 50s and 60s.
401ks are far safer as employees and employers alike I believe have learned the lesson, plus 401ks are transferrable so if you lose your job after 28 years you don't risk your retirement.
401Ks offer lower benefit levels and are only as safe as your investment choices, the stability of your portfolio management company, and the national economy. However, I do agree that they are, generally, a better option for both sides in the long term simply because all of the company's retiree costs are paid for along the way.
Let's put this in context. "A generation or two of union costs on them" does not just appear out of nowhere. The company and the union had to *agree* to it.
Of course they did. I never suggested otherwise.
The difference between the US and the Japanese union legacy costs is that the Japanese, by law, had to actually (heaven forbid!) fund the benefits in advance, not just expect superprofits to cover this completely expected cost when it comes due. The US companies did not. The money that they should logically have set aside to fund the benefits, was instead thrown off as bonuses and dividends.
Any chance you have something to support your claims? I recall reading in the late 90s about Japan's struggles with their national pension plan because of their long-term economic slump and an aging population (sound familiar?). I believe that to combat future problems, they began cutting back from promised levels and increasing employee costs. (Here's the best I could find in 30 seconds on Google: http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v63n4/v63n4p99.pdf
How do you propose the large companies should fully fund the benefits in advance? On the day they hire an employee the company must deposit a check for the full cost of their pension assuming they work there until retirement age? Of course, they must somehow account for future inflation, increases in health care that outpace inflation, etc. Most companies with pension problems simply suffer from too many retirees compared to the current profit (exactly what Japan has been dealing with for at least 10 or 15 years).
I will grant you that, based upon my understanding of Japanese pension law, Toyota does seem to benefit compared to US companies because the Japanese government holds most pension responsibilities. I don't know enough to say how their national pension compares to US Social Security or GM's pension plans.
If the foreign manufacturers can find ways to keep health care costs under control they will continue to have a serious advantage over GM and Ford...
My brother works for a Toyota plant. They have a pharmacy on site where employees can get over the counter medicine for free. Toyota pays 100% of his monthly premium and his coverage is significantly better than any I've had anywhere I've worked. They already absorb much more of their employees' health care costs than most corporations, which they can do thanks to little retiree benefit costs right now.
...and be able to keep the "built in the USA" perception.
Perception? Their vehicles are "built in the USA" more so than the so-called American car companies.
A quick Google search http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=bmw+unionization+U.S.+plants tells me that the U.S. plant is non-unionized but pays competitive wages.
Toyota does the same thing in the US. They pay union wages and union benefits in order to keep the union out. Some of their plants have unionized and Toyota is very careful to make sure that non-union plants keep pace with the wages and benefits of the union plants. If you are getting the same benefits without paying union dues, why would employees want a union? Makes sense on both sides as long as Toyota has a few union shops to keep them honest.
To be fair to GM and Ford, they have a generation or two of union costs on them that the new Toyota and Honda ventures do not. Let's see if the Asian manufactures can continue as they are now after they have as many US retirees as US employees. Maybe they can, but I'll be surprised.
Not necessarily. Many ISP:s ties the IP address allocation to the socket. It is quite common to do so for student apartments and dormitories. That is, the RIAA could prove, with the universitys help, which network socket the infringing file came from.
And how exactly does that help? Student housing generally has two to four people in the same room or suite, students sometimes provide their own WAP or wired switches, and students often share their computers with friends.
The most restrictive arrangements I encountered in over five years as a CIO in higher education was a college that required students to register their MAC address and tied it to the switch port, blocking all other traffic on that port. This arrangement is prone to MAC spoofing as well as a router or firewall that will NAT traffic from the room.
I know another college that went the other way and shared a single business-class cable connection across an entire dorm. I'm sure their upload rates were terrible, but they had more download bandwidth than the administration LAN. And, neither the school nor the ISP had any user-to-traffic logs available.
I'm not suggesting that a more airtight solution doesn't exist but colleges usually are concerned with network management, not with providing enough evidence to meet the standards of a civil lawsuit. As you make the process more restrictive, you increase the inconvenience to your end-users. As you increase the amount of useful data that you log, you increase the cost of providing network services.
You're taking the position that downloads are authorized unless the person making them available knows they're unauthorized.
You're mistaking the arguments of the record labels for the law. The "making available" argument is far from settled and is not obvious in the law. I'm taking the position that the public library did not infringe on copyrights if a patron makes copies of a book they borrow.
The law takes the position that downloads are unauthorized unless the person making them available either has permission themselves or knows that the person asking for the download is authorized.
This is blatantly false. I would strongly recommend that you read at least a Wikipedia article on copyright law before you get into arguments about it.
If you don't, then the copy you made for them was unauthorized as far as the court's concerned. The recipient may be authorized (by definition, as the copyright holder) to make copies, but he didn't make the copy, you did, and as far as you knew at the time you didn't have authorization.
Your arguments also make it obvious that you have no idea how file sharing works. If I have a file in my P2P client's shared folder, I'm not making a copy for each person. I have my own legal copy sitting there and other people may choose to make their own copy. Whether the downloader now has an authorized copy or not, I didn't make a copy for them.
Bad analogy. To be a parallel the driver would've had to have been speeding upon and after seeing the cop, in which case the cop doesn't need to make any claim about what the driver would've done had he not seen the cop.
What? This makes zero sense as an analogy here. Further, unless the cop observed the driver speeding he cannot write a ticket. He can't assume that the young guy in the sports car probably was speeding or likely will speed later, and issue him a ticket for it. Likewise, just because someone working for MediaSentry downloaded a copy, you have no grounds to assume that other people downloaded a copy before and after.
The violation isn't in receiving the copy, it's in making the copy without permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright law actually includes many cases where a legitimate copy does not require permission from the copyright holder.
When the copyright holder asks you to make him a copy, he has not implicitly granted you any permission because copyright law contains no implicit permissions beyond fair use. So if you make a copy for him, it's still an unauthorized copy (he never gave you permission to make it).
If the copyright holder asks you to him a copy, that is explicit permission. You're arguing that permission does not equal authorization? Seriously?
If you put an mp3 file up for download somewhere public (be it P2P, newsgroups, web, wherever) and accessible to the public in general, I'd say that you couldn't make a case in court that you really, honestly, expected the downloader to be the rights owner.
Read the GP's post again. He specifically said that intent to copyright isn't an issue. If you can't show that someone actually made an authorized copy of the material, then your already tenuous argument of "making available" has no legs. The record labels depend on downloads of authorized copies, so where is the actual infringement?
The entire IT world currently exists for its own sake.
First, the argument is made in the context of the business world, not about what you do with your free time. Further, your whole comment reflects the conflicts in attitudes that the book is attempting to address. Too many individuals are unable to think outside of their silo, seeing themselves and their work as inherently important without considering the business goals and how they impact them. I've seen attitudes like yours ruin IT departments (and research departments, and facility service departments, and accounting departments, etc) as the department becomes a fiefdom concerned more with protecting and growing its kingdom. In most businesses, IT and all other ancillary departments, exist only to facilitate the primary business processes of the company.
I recently watched a large electric utility outsource their IT functions to EDS. This decision was made primarily because their IT structure was out of control and no one knew how to check it. Everyone in IT was transferred to EDS or they left the company altogether. In the two years since, EDS has trimmed the their staffing on the contract by at least 50%. My prediction is that in another year or two, the company will bring IT services back in house again and will do it with staffing about 25% of what it was before they outsourced. As an IT manager, I make sure that this isn't a good option for our department by communicating regularly with upper management, by always tying our work to company goals, by maintaining quality support, and by never allowing the department to become obviously overstaffed. IT employees who can't tie their toys to our goals do not survive in this culture.
This is just the level of ignorance politicians want you to have. Oh it costs ya a lot. If you bother to read any of the papers available about health care systems across the world it would open your eyes. ZERO OUTLAY... damn, next your going to believe that the roads are free too.
First, the GP clearly meant that he doesn't pay anything additional for the service. Discounting toll roads, you drive without any additional outlay. You've already paid for them when you filled your gas tank. Driving on a local, state, or federal highway doesn't cost extra. There is a difference between paying for the infrastructure and paying for each use, which is the point the GP seemed to be making.
Second, are you suggesting that the mess in the US is the most efficient means of providing health care, or simply arguing that no system is free? If the former, you failed to make the point. Duplication of services, for-profit providers, for-profit insurers, and for-profit medicine ensures inflated prices. The obvious result, and what is clearly demonstrated in the US, is that many individuals are priced out of the system. Even if you could show that other solutions are no more efficient, you still have to answer whether health care is less of a public service than transportation, electricity, water, sewage, trash pickup, fire fighting, police services, etc.
The fact that an OEM XP CD is marked 'not for resale' doesn't mean anything - as should have been proved by a recent court decision regarding music promo CDs, where the judge ruled that they were a gift and no longer the property of the record companies - who consequently had NO SAY over what was done with them (short of copyright laws and duplication). If that's the case for gifts, where you've paid money for something, the case for right of resale would be even stronger.
The problem is that the buyer cannot legally use the product. The license agreement limits the use of OEM Windows to the hardware on which it was purchased.
It is illegal to resell old copies of Windows XP for use in new computers.
The right of first sale has been consistently upheld by every court decision I am aware of. Do you know something I don't?
The GP was incorrect in that it generally is not illegal to resell XP or other software. However, that is a bit misleading because most Windows licenses cannot be reused due to the terms of OEM OS licenses. The license is valid only on the computer with which it was sold so you're limited to selling only the boxed retail copies of Windows. Additionally, when the marketplace ignores the right of first sale (as eBay does), it make it difficult to sell the product even if you have the legal right to do so.
Even without those, however, most corporate customers have access through Microsoft to Windows XP under Open, Select, or Software Assurance licenses and if the Vista licenses that come with the computer fall under the terms of those agreements, they may legally downgrade.
The licenses that come with the computer are completely separate from Microsoft's volume licensing programs. Dell is selling you an OEM license for Vista that includes downgrade rights, which means you can run Windows Vista, XP, ME, 2000, 98, 95, or 3.1 on that particular computer (volume licensing is not tied to particular hardware). Large VARs and OEMs traditionally did not offer nor support any downgrade options themselves, but the corporate demand for XP over Vista created a significant enough market for some to offer it now. Whether you can get this on a home PC seems to depend on the salesperson you get (at least at Dell), with some offering it at no charge, some refusing to provide it even when requested, and others doing it for a $99 charge.
Why are we so intend to lynch their stooges when the masterminds are getting away scot-free? Are we just settling because we know they're above the law? Isn't there a bit of a double standard here?
The thing missed by all the telecom immunity apologists here is that this completely prevents any real investigation into the administration's program. Sure, the administration wants to make sure that the companies are protected financially but the real concern is that a lawsuit likely would result in documents being made public that the White House does not want seen. By barring these lawsuits, they have ensured that this cannot happen. By saying the immunity is "no big deal", you are supporting the keeping of these secrets and the obstruction of investigating or prosecuting those that you would call more guilty.
No, I'm sick of listing things and then having you poke tiny linguistic holes in them...
I'm not poking tiny linguistic holes, I'm trying to tie you down to something and help you see the holes in your arguments. That's part of the debating thing you mentioned earlier.
Western Europe is hobbling along with little to no growth and a shrinking population while countries with low taxes and low regulation are growing and flourishing like Hong Kong, to some extent the United States & China.
The causes are much deeper than you apparently realize. Western Europe had its industrial revolution, polluted itself to death, established workers' rights and environmental regulations, outsourced everything, and became a nation of consumers. The US is approaching the end of that progression today. Third world countries with growing economies are just now experiencing their revolutions. They have little or no worker protection. They have few environment protections. They export much more than they import. India is seeing a slight decrease in growth as unemployment begins to drop, as the workforce becomes more educated, and as a middle class develops. Many companies simply move on, finding new places to exploit.
Actually, the word "liberal" has much meaning. When this country was founded it meant that someone was an advocate of freedom, small, decentralized government, and a government who in large part leaves citizens alone. Unfortunately its meaning has been twisted to mean nearly the opposite today, which seems to fit your opinions quite well.
First, the words are twisted by society (which today means the large media corporations). In the US, the word liberal has been turned into a slur by the Rush Limbaughs of the world, with no meaning other than "the bad guys". These same people have redefined conservative Republican to mean something completely opposed to what it represented only 20 years ago.
Second, I doubt you have little idea of my opinions. Forcing you to defend your arguments does not necessarily mean that I hold the views that you consider opposite yours.
My point is simply that since taxation is always coupled with government expenditure, the combination can only have the effect of transferring resources from where consumers wanted them to somewhere a bureaucrat or politicians wanted them. Don't try to refute this by saying "well if the government spends the resources where consumers want them, then it is ok," because as previously shown, this is impossible.
This argument is against government altogether. Any government other than an informal tribal council is going to require operating expenses, and taxation is the primary means for gathering them. Without taxation and government expenditures there are no police services, no fire departments, no court systems, no military, no laws, no anything. At this point in this discussion I doubt this is what you really mean, but it is what you are saying.
Why do you think private banks fail so much today? Because of the Federal Reserve system, (a disastrous creation of the Federal Government; also see: The Great Depression). However, I won't get into that; it's a debate for another time.
Before the time for that debate comes, I recommend you spend some time actually reading about banking. The Fed was created in an attempt to alleviate serious banking problems that were caused by the lack of coordinated central authority. As to why banks fail today, it is almost completely due to reckless investing by the banks, wh
Nationalization would be a way to replace a private monopoly with a government one. Hardly an improvement if eliminating monopolies is one's goal.
A private company exists to make a profit. Competition from other private companies balance the profit drive. A government exists to serve the people. The monopolies are apples and oranges.
Second, in the United States there is nothing about government-operated industries in the Constitution, which immediately makes illegitimate any federal ownership or operation of any industry.
If your claim was true, I guess you would claim the highway systems are unconstitutional? What about VA hospitals? What about the military itself, since this administration has proven that the US can rely on mercenaries for many things? However, the Constitution explicitly grants the USPS its nationalized status, so your claim is bunk anyway.
The extremely high fixed costs, barriers to entry, and general social benefits associated with industries like utilities justify/necessitate state/local government subsidization. However, once established, the government need not constantly interfere.
You believe that the government should help build the infrastructure then turn it over to private industry with little oversight? Seriously?
There are very, very few areas where government intervention in the private sector is legitimate.
Since you like to quote examples of failed government interventions, perhaps you could list a few successful free markets? Ones with little or no government intervention.
Show me a country where people starve in large numbers, and I'll show you a government that is corrupt, doesn't enforce private property rights, or takes a large quantity of its citizens' income.
Show me a government that isn't corrupt, truly respects private property rights, and doesn't tax too much.
The point was to illustrate how awful governments are at running industry, using historical facts instead of idealistic liberal rhetoric.
Applying meaningless labels to your opponent - is that standard debate tactics as well?
Usually in a debate it's a good idea to back up what one is claiming with facts and historical examples, and that's exactly what I did.
No, you haven't shown an example where the telecom infrastructure was nationalized in an otherwise quasi-capitalist society. And, you still haven't explained why US government control of the roads is okay and why it hasn't resulted in the failure of the US economy.
I just remembered another couple government corporations which have recently failed: Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. Maybe you've heard of them? If only the people running them were smarter, then maybe they wouldn't have failed. The solution to governmental failure certainly isn't privatization because government knows best how to handle people's mortgages. That's why governmental mortgage corporations don't fail. Oh wait
You really shouldn't go so far out on a limb when you have no idea what you're talking about. Although things are not looking good, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have not failed. Several private banks have failed this year, including IndyMac just last week. Further, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren't government corporations. Fannie Mae was a government agency with a monopoly in the secondary mortgage market, until it was privatized about 40 years ago. Freddie Mac was created (as a private corporation) to compete with Fannie Mae. Both are considered government-sponsored enterprises, but they get no funding or direct oversight from the government. In fact, they sound exactly like what you suggested for utilities way up in the top of this thread.
Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution...yada yada...Powers not granted to the Feder
Yes it is, because when the government breaks up a monopoly, competition is promoted. When industries are nationalized it virtually requires a government monopoly.
Nationalization would be another way to break up a monopoly. Utility infrastructure is a perfect example of a natural monopoly. If you are okay with semiprivate or subsidized utility companies then why is it so absurd to take it one step further and let the government manage the infrastructure? And, for someone promoting the so-called free market, you seem strangely okay with government meddling...
Regardless, this proves my point even more because it shows how awful the government is at planning & directing economic activity.
No, it is an anecdotal reflection of how one government managed their economic activity. You didn't address the point that people starve to death everywhere, nor how nationalizing the telecom infrastructure would cause mass starvation. Central control of the food supply is a much different beast than a utility infrastructure.
This is not true. Individual States own and operate most of the roads in the United States. The Federal Government owns and operates major interstate highways, I believe.
Do you not realize that individual states also are governments? And, you agree that the federal government controls significant infrastructure. I guess you would be okay with nationalized telecom if the state governments controlled most of the copper and fiber, and the federal government had a few interstate fiber runs? What are you even trying to say?
However, the idea of nationalizing telecoms is absurd.
It really is no more absurd that the government ordering the primary telecom company to break itself into pieces. Yet, the US did that.
Regarding your comment about free markets, I'm sure all the people who starved to death in Mao's China during the Great Leap Forward wouldn't agree that free markets are "bullshit" as you say.
Your argument is built on a false premise - there is no way to know that free markets would have prevented people in China from starving to death. The fact that they did in something other than a free market in no way validates your system. In fact, people starve to death in every country of the world.
Just look at all the historical examples of successful government controlled/owned industries where millions of people didn't starve to death. Oh wait...
The US government controls/owns most roads in the country, yet that doesn't cause people to starve to death. Do you imagine that nationalized telecom service would somehow make people starve? Really?
Why is it that so many executives feel the need to destroy a successful business model? Ebay started as an online auction house where individuals could find a worldwide audience for cool, quirky stuff, and it was wildly successful as such. If its executives want to start a site for selling commercial products with free-floating prices -- which is essentially what they're turning Ebay into -- then fine, but why are they abandoning the business that made them successful in the first place? Ebay was one of the few real success stories to come out of the dot-com boom. It's really sad to see them throwing that away now.
Some of it is simply natural business processes - as eBay was more successful it attracted larger sellers. By tying the all-important reputation to the number of transactions completed, these large sellers quickly gained an advantage. As a business, eBay no doubt gets more money (and a more stable income) from large sellers than a collection of grandmas selling their Tupperware.
However, the seller policies were modified over the years in ways that benefited the larger sellers. For example, many small sellers left when eBay wholesale surrendered to big business efforts to ignore the legal rights protected by the first-sale doctrine. My smart-card programmer listing was pulled without explanation, which I finally figured out was apparently due to DirectTV claiming that it could be used to "hack" their equipment.
Unfortunately, each time I looked, I found no viable alternative. There are plenty of small auction sites, but none with a fraction of the buyers and/or the buyer and seller protections offered by eBay. Has the Web simply been too commercialized now for someone to make a new eBay that caters to individuals again?
Ignoring your "free market is God" bullshit, let's think logically about this particular situation. The infrastructure required for a public utility is very expensive and the ROI is significantly smaller for each player after the first. This is a market that almost guarantees a monopoly or duopoly. Capitalism is good for consumers only when there is competition.
What are you smoking? The electric companies are the telcos' and cable companies' wet dream. What do you think Enron was? That's right it was primarily an electricity and gas company.
Enron was a product of a partially (and terribly flawed) deregulated electric market. Their antics would not have been possible in the fully regulated markets in most US states.
I was interested in FIOS speeds a little, but I discovered that they would be cutting the independently-powered copper and replacing it with an 8-hour battery on the wall of the house.
Verizon removes the copper because they are required to provide other carriers access to their copper but not to their fiber. And, they lock you into their higher-priced service. If you want traditional services down the road, Verizon will charge you to reinstall the copper (if they will do it at all).
It is time to face up to the reality, that no legal sheet of paper can stop a foreign government from tapping. Suits like this one, falsely encourage people to believe that legal pieces of paper can keep their phone conversations safe.
This has nothing to do with foreign governments. You are attempting to muddy the waters with arguments unrelated to the issue at hand.
Foreign governments and criminal organizations do not care what laws congress and the courts create.
So, into which category do you put the current administration? I vote for the second.
And that, ladies gentlemen and geek masses, is just one reason why the "...to overthrow the government if they turn into a tyranny!" argument in support of the 2nd Amendment is baloney. Try it and see whether the general public see you as a terrorist or a patriot.
First, just because things aren't bad enough yet doesn't mean they can't get there. Second, it doesn't have to be a full-scale revolution against the federal government to be effective. When the federal government refused to assist the locals in Athens, Georgia, they used force to remove the corruption from their county government (see http://www.constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen.htm for example).
Oh yeah, and even if you DID somehow manage to raise a large, angry mob of enraged disenchanted ex-mainstreamers, how well d'you think you'd do against a modern military?
Perhaps Iraq could serve as a good example? With a small population of anti-US revolutionaries and a portion of the population quietly in support, they have inflicted thousands of casualties on the best military money can buy.
And, just because you are uncomfortable with the thought of protecting yourself against an oppressive government, you ought not take that right from others who are willing to fight for their liberty.