I work for a company that produces tax (and accounting) software for practicing accountants (Not schmucks like us). And we employ HUNDREDS of programmers, HUNDREDS of CPAs, and all the rest of the people who go into making software a "product". (caveat: we also do 1065s, 1120s, and a whole boatload of smaller entity types).
On top of the need for vast amounts of (relatively low skilled) programmer hours, most of all the calculation work is simply "not fun". You certainly would never want to code it to challenge yourself. Tax calculation also is very fragmented from state to state, and it is very difficult to share code across state functional units. This is not to say that you don't need highly skilled "architects" to bring things together into a common platform, or deal with things like state to state transfers, etc.
And when you're all done. Get ready to do it again next year.
All that said, you could make the project a lot easier by eliminating states, removing things like passive calculations, at risk limitations, AMT, etc. But at that point, I would recommend just pringing the forms out (they are available in PDF format from the various taxing authorities), and filling them out yourself.
I guess the main thing I am getting at is that the problem that is being solved doesn't lend itself to the open source design philosophy.
Actually, on one boring afternoon I tried the while(1) fork bit. Running as a user, it certainly didn't bring down my box. I think users are limited to two hundred open threads or some such.
That said, when I did it as root, it certainly slowed things down incredibly. Can't remember if it crashed it though.
Frankly, once a company has achieved "leader" status in a field, they can only really lose it through 1) the whole field gets depressed, 2) either a few large or many small mistakes, or 3) the rest of the field gangs up on the leader to overcome its superior resources.
I'm not sure if I agree with this. A company can become a market leader for any number of reasons, and I can imagine a company becoming a market leader in even homogenous goods markets (such as crude oil refinement) if there are strong enough externalities or market distortions that are introduced for whatever reason. The conditions that lead to this could come from internal sources (such as a skilled staff) or external sources (exclusive government contract, etc.). Any changes in these could cause a shakeup and relative repositioning in the market in question.
Of course we can always say some things like "If barriers to entry are high, it becomes easier for a market leader to defend its position", or "If there are increasing returns to scale, than existing firms are more competitive than startups which could cause competition."
Maybe I'm making a big deal out of something that you just mentioned out of hand... I just remain unconvinced.
I can't think of any reason to compare it to arbitrage. There is no resale going on.
A more appropriate assessment may be that by effectively segmenting their market on ability to pay, they are able to control prices and capture revenues that would be unavailable to them in a fixed price system.
This is of course a good thing for those people who would not have flown at market price, but are willing to fly for some price above where marginal cost == marginal revinue. You win, The airlines win...the only case where I think there would be losers are if enough people start using priceline that the airlines can effectively raise their "normal" rates to capture monopolistic rents, knowing that displaced puchasers will still buy at their own price level.
Of course, taxing traditional business and not eBusiness can set up a negative externality that will artificially increase business on the net.
It would be best (in welfare terms) if the internets advancement in the business arena could be secured from things such as lowering of transaction costs and moving variable costs to fixed costs, and not due to tax based incentives.
As many other people point out, this externality disproportionately affects the less wealthy, making it a double slam in terms of public policy.
If you are an economist and interested in taxation and eCommerce, the WTO has put out two "research documents" on this (vis a vis international taxation), the most recent of which came out in 97 and is probably the most cogent thing I have read on the topic. I don't know if it can be ordered online, but if so, check out www.wto.org. If you are interested, I can dig the book up from my colleague and find you ordering information.
Re:I basically agree with you...
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WTO + SDMI = NWO
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After rereading what I wrote, I feel I should add an addendum.
While 100% Free trade may not be an optimal solution, "Free-er" trade would undeniably be a good thing.
One thing that I think is interesting about anti-WTO arguments is that many of them are along the lines of "The WTO is a servant to Multi-National firms". Multi-Nationals are the ones who want tariffs in place as they allow them to affect price pressures, and allow companies that would otherwise be competitors (say GM and Honda) to cartelize.
Its funny to watch all the Econ-Nerds come out of the woodwork with this WTO stuff. I too am alleged to be a scholar of finance and economics, although I pay to be so rather than get paid to be so.:)
Now I don't want to discuss propoganda or sociology(point 1), civil dissobedience and violence (point 3), or 3rd world/"sweatshop" labor- basicly because I'm on the same page as you are.
I am familiar with most of the economics arguments surrounding trade: and I really don't think that the free-traders are winning. Even the most ardent free trade supporters (Krugman, etc) will admit that their arguments only hold water in the general case, where there is perfect competition, no externalities, and regular economic conditions (decreasing returns to scale, etc). I would be hard pressed to name an import or export sector where those assumptions would be true. Certainly not the hot button industries : aircraft, automobile, textiles, agriculture.
Our (US) current administrations viewpoint revolves around "Fair Trade" (another loaded phrase), which is probably a little more "sane", but these people, (and the managed trade club), are IMO off base if they apply their policies without a case by case analysis. I think it could be fairly easy to show that most of the places where we see international trade in general are monopolistic to some extent, and therefor must be treated as such to come up with optimal trade policies.
All that you said about economic transition costs, short term costs, etc. are valid. But I am saying that even if you wiped the board of all the sidebar issues (short term costs, distrobutional effects, uncaptured values, etc), simply endorsing free trade across the board would most likely be a mistake.
I think this free trade "myth" is perpetuated because it is the best simple solution. Which is to say, it is better for someone to espouse free trade than protectionism, given that they don't have the time/inclination to look at the details of the trade patterns, or trade theory in general. In other words, I think the free trade argument is the start of rational economics, but not the end.
Again, I apologise for the tone of my earlier post- usually when I get upset like that it is indicative of a lack of understanding on my part.
Re:I really dislike this sort of article
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...globalization cuts both ways...
IMO, this is the best part of your good post. With that out of the way, let me add my caveat.:)
Certain globalization will result in cultural change. But what ways of life are worth maintaining at the expense of illiteracy, poverty and disease?
The problem is that some non-economic goals do not have expenses in terms of illiteracy, poverty, or desease. They only cost productivity. To the extent that productivity is tied to standard of living, there is an argument against this. Still, that should be left for the country to decide, rather than the trading partner. Raging against globalization is not the solution here, but neither is an across the board elimination of the ability to engage in active policy making. I believe exceptions must be embraced, though I don't know how to restrict strategic inefficiencies without strong concepts like parity of negotiation. (Which solves one problem and creates another).
Losing the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest is painful, and should be avoided, but we should also work to prevent mass murder at the hands of despots.
Apples and oranges. These things are not mutually exclusive (which I do not doubt you are aware of), but I think towards the end of the post you fall into "sloganism"...The future of mankind is with transparency...not with petty xenophobic nationistic views. Them's propoganda words (reguardless of the truth about transparency).
Of course, I generate more heat than light usually, so let me conclude with : I like your post.:)
Nevermind the millions of dollars this cost Seattle.
Millions of dollars is piddly compared to the numbers that we are talking about when it comes to international trade. Millions of dollars are insigificant if you try to quantify the externalities associated with environmental degredation. If you are dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars, you are getting closer, if you are talking billions of dollars, I would be listening, but when we piss away tens of billions of dollars in a single bad trade policy (read: The japanese auto VER), I just can't care about "millions of dollars".
Nevermind the fact that the protestors blocked the downtown area off for several days.
Yep, that is what protesters do. Go ahead and add a few million dollars to your total- I don't mind.
Nevermind the fact that there are sound economic arguments for free trade.
Unless you are dealing with perfect competition, and no "large country" effects on international prices, free trade is a bad idea. Of course, finding the appropriate levels of intervention is difficult, but free trade has been shown to be suboptimal. If you ignore the rest of my post, listen to this. I'll give you some references on this if you would like to do some reading.
Nevermind the fact that many stores were looted and vandalized.Nevermind the fact that Seattle has never been a very entrenched city
All of this is irrelevant. Those protestors had points that are more important than "millions of dollars". To ignore those points because of demographics, collateral damage, or general distaste for non multinational solutions would be a serious mistake. You don't have to join in the anti-WTO ranks...just consider the arguments seriously.
I apologize for the tone of my post: this really upset me. I agree with what you said concerning 3rd world labor standards, but what the original poster said about the middle class acting as a stablizing force in society is true. You attacked it very strongly using arguments that are questionable. Of course, ranting makes me look like the asshole. For what its worth, nothing personal.:/
The heart of the issue lies in the balance betweent the public good of the information released under IP protection, and the cost of the monopoly that IP law provides. All framed in the context of international enforcement.
My biggest issue is that it doesn't seem clear to me that there is unimpeachable evidence on either side of the IP debate, and yet we (The United States) feel justified in exporting our IP philosophy to the rest of the world.
FWIW, I think trade policy can kill as effectively as military policy (conflict). The difference is that its a lot easier to slide questionable trade policy by "the public" than it is questionable military policy.
This is kinda moot, but copying for your own use isn't "fair use". Time-displacement, or more generally media-displacement is infringement, but is protected from prosecution via the betamax case that went before the supreme court (84?).
"As long as there are unequal labor rights, corporations can use this as leverage at the bargaining table. "Accept these concessions or we'll shit all your jobs to the Phillipines where we can pay them 10% as much." This opportunity for corporations puts downward pressure on the middle class. This is what the protesters are afraid of, as far as the labor rights issue goes. "
The dynamic argument against this is that as companies do this, economic pressures will raise the price of labor. As they raise productivity, their standard of living will increase, etc. etc. Can you provide a reasonable argument against that?
There are numerous data that shows that capital immobility severely limits corperate incentives to relocate based on fluctuating incentives such as wage rates. Do you have thoughts on this?
I'm not saying you're totally off base, but without addressing said criticisms, I don't see these anti-WTO arguments as having as much legs as such things as sovereignty, environmental zero-sum game and pollution tolerance, transparency, and counter-incentive arguments.
Sorry...while I don't like the WTO, (and I despise WIPO), I think that the labor arguments against it are actually the weakest.
Heh. The AC's are all over this one. Unfortunately, there isn't much but rhetoric flowing around this thread.
Free trade is not the best way to economic growth, it is simply a way.
It would be a serious mistake to discount the points that the protesters bring up. I think most of them are fairly valid: Removing trade restrictions operates without reguard to non-economic agendas (such as social justice).
What we would like to see is that Nations would set their restrictions at levels that only protected those things which they see as non-economicly advantageous, and that otherwise they would keep their borders open. Unfortunately, strategic and dynamic pressure will push trade boundries up if left alone. GATT solves that problem with the "Most Favored Nation" concept, but it does so at the expense of the member nations soveriegnty.
Also, while freeing trade is in aggregate good, it doesn't deal with distrobutional issues, nor does it deal (properly) with non-competitive markets. (It can be shown that most trade occurs within oligopolistic or monopolistic frameworks).
Bottom line: Its a very complex issue and the only reason that the big boys (Krugman, Baghwati, etc.) take polarizing positions is that they can define clearer arguments that way. When it comes to individual policy implementation, sweeping statements on either side of the (free trade v. fair trade) debate hedge heavily.
OK, This is probably shitpicking since I think you know what you are talking about, but...
Technically, when you amend the constitution, it counteracts previous content. For example, income taxation was specificly non-constitutional until it was amended into law as a way to pay back our war debts. A treaty, while considered "The Law of The Land" doesn't invalidate limitations explicitely listed in the constitution. Again an example, if the rules against reverse engineering in the Waus* agreement (whatever that thing was called) were found to violate the first amendment, the treaty would be rendered unenforceable within the US.
Again, I think you know this, and I think we are just crossing meanings on "ammend".
Re:History is repleat: Patents stifle development
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Please don't take this wrong, since I side with "the other guy", but I'm going to take this on in hopes you can educate me.:)
The fact is that the nations without a good patent system have no significant home developed technologies.
Are you suggesting that the countries listed have no significant (homegrown) "technologies"? I would think that the innovation in countries such as this would be of a more incremental nature (since they can just rip off the truely technological leaping advancements), but I see incremental innovation as an important kind of innovation to society as a whole. I guess I would like to say that these countries would effectively specialize in incremental innovation, giving them some efficiency gains in that area which could be realized as other countries copied the ideas back.
True enough - BUT the DEVELOPMENT of new products is usually colored by the issue of patentability. XYZ Inc. is NOT going to sink $500 million in R&D...[snip]...Without patents industrial R&D spending would decline in the US to 20% of it's current levels.
Can you give me some sources for these numbers? I have been looking for evidence to support my arguments against patents and have been unable to find good economic sources on either side of the issue. I think the core of this is that the measurability of innovation is limited to secondary evidences. But again, I have gone looking for any evidence, and so far come up empty handed.
[Discussion on Reverse Engineering]
A couple of things. It isn't clear to me that the legal limitations against reverse engineering are enforceable contract clauses (at least until we passed laws that validated them). I'm sure its arguable on both sides, so I'll leave that alone for now. Also, the concept of trade secret is still valid in the "no patent" world, and to the extent that one can be maintained, the monopolistic gain can be collected. I think the fundamental question is : Do patents speed up technological developement enough justify their social cost?
I guess my big issue is this: All sides of this debate like to talk about things like "300 year records of [ success || failure ]", but I don't see anyone throwing out data, and it seems to me that the anectdotal evidence kinda swings both ways. (My opinion is against patents, but my opinion doesn't count for much- Yet. =) ).
Absolutely. That was what I was trying to say. (Like I said, there are probably people who are WAY better at constitutional interpretation than me, but I have not been corrected to date). =)
Thus a Treaty overrides state law, but not the US Constitution.
The whole concept of patenting genetic algorythms (and chemical structures) seems highly suspect to me, but I imagine that the forces that support them are extremely well connected and well funded.
I'm pretty much for in favor of the WTO keeping a hands off approach to issues that touch Environmental or Social issues directly, but I don't see a way around this when it comes to patents. The whole TIPS thing seems very problematic, and I'm glad it came across slashdot.
US Constitution: Article VI, Section 2: (retyped, forgive typos)
This Consitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Consitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwistanding.
The relative phrase is "...Constitution or Laws of any State..."
That is state constitution, or state laws.
If I'm wrong: Smack me down, but I think this is a common misconception. Treaties do not override the Federal Constitution.
Paul Krugman said (paraphrased)"You go to a doctor for medical advice, and you go to a lawyer for legal advice, so why do people take economic advice from people who aren't economists?".
Of course Krugman doesn't make many freinds. =)
In any event, I agree. What was more interesting was the classification of software as "good" or "service". MS favors the status quo of "good", while leveraging a licensing scheme. You purchase the "licence to use a good" rather than a service. Seems kind of a thin line to me.
On textiles, I'm not sure that textiles are the most heavily subsidized, but the MFA (Multi Fibre Agreement) is certainly the most complicated stack of international law I think you could find.
Tariffs are one way to achieve an import restriction. There are many effective non-tariff barriers. Hell, If I ran a exporting country, no one would ever tariff me: I would immediately enact VERs to counter the effects of the tariff (or at least to reap their "rent").
My whole point is that tariffs just don't matter that much. If you have a non-economic goal that you want to support (say environmental protection), you can simply use a non-tariff measure to achieve your goal without WTO intervention.
Of course, I would argue that this is a bad idea. Trade simply isn't that important. Maybe 3% of GDP tops (see Krugman on this). If you have a policy in mind, you should target that policy directly, not through a secondary channel. Find a political solution through a treaty, don't eat the welfare inefficiency associated with price control.
As an aside, I would say that the "credible threat" of tariffs are actually more important than tariffs themselves. But now I'm rambling... =)
I can't really think of any good reasons to use a tariff except possibly leveraging "big country" buying power to optimize trade levels. There are almost always better ways of changing behaviors or seeking non-economic solutions than tariffs.
To the extent that the WTO reduces tariffs, I would say it is a success, however, you can see in economic data that non-tariff barriers have actually risen at higher rates than tariff barriers have fallen. As a matter of fact, there are so many ways of duplicating the effect of a tariff, without actually imposing one that I would argue that the WTO is practically ineffectual as an economic machine.
What the WTO is efficacious at is political change. (I'm not sure what this is worth, but I think it is true).
I guess the long and the short of it is that the WTO serves a very valid purpose, doesn't effectively limit the soveriegnty of the nation, and actually does some good.
Slashdot Mirror
If they can't agree on this, how will we ever get 180+ countries to agree on copyright law?
They(*) don't have to. They are already implementing TRIPS which will do it for them.
(*) - Here "They" refers to the EU, but I'm pretty sure the Digital Millenium Copyright Act will bring the US into compliance as well.
...is very complex.
I work for a company that produces tax (and accounting) software for practicing accountants (Not schmucks like us). And we employ HUNDREDS of programmers, HUNDREDS of CPAs, and all the rest of the people who go into making software a "product". (caveat: we also do 1065s, 1120s, and a whole boatload of smaller entity types).
On top of the need for vast amounts of (relatively low skilled) programmer hours, most of all the calculation work is simply "not fun". You certainly would never want to code it to challenge yourself. Tax calculation also is very fragmented from state to state, and it is very difficult to share code across state functional units. This is not to say that you don't need highly skilled "architects" to bring things together into a common platform, or deal with things like state to state transfers, etc.
And when you're all done. Get ready to do it again next year.
All that said, you could make the project a lot easier by eliminating states, removing things like passive calculations, at risk limitations, AMT, etc. But at that point, I would recommend just pringing the forms out (they are available in PDF format from the various taxing authorities), and filling them out yourself.
I guess the main thing I am getting at is that the problem that is being solved doesn't lend itself to the open source design philosophy.
Actually, on one boring afternoon I tried the while(1) fork bit. Running as a user, it certainly didn't bring down my box. I think users are limited to two hundred open threads or some such.
That said, when I did it as root, it certainly slowed things down incredibly. Can't remember if it crashed it though.
Frankly, once a company has achieved "leader" status in a field, they can only really lose it through 1) the whole field gets depressed, 2) either a few large or many small mistakes, or 3) the rest of the field gangs up on the leader to overcome its superior resources.
I'm not sure if I agree with this. A company can become a market leader for any number of reasons, and I can imagine a company becoming a market leader in even homogenous goods markets (such as crude oil refinement) if there are strong enough externalities or market distortions that are introduced for whatever reason. The conditions that lead to this could come from internal sources (such as a skilled staff) or external sources (exclusive government contract, etc.). Any changes in these could cause a shakeup and relative repositioning in the market in question.
Of course we can always say some things like "If barriers to entry are high, it becomes easier for a market leader to defend its position", or "If there are increasing returns to scale, than existing firms are more competitive than startups which could cause competition."
Maybe I'm making a big deal out of something that you just mentioned out of hand... I just remain unconvinced.
I can't think of any reason to compare it to arbitrage. There is no resale going on.
A more appropriate assessment may be that by effectively segmenting their market on ability to pay, they are able to control prices and capture revenues that would be unavailable to them in a fixed price system.
This is of course a good thing for those people who would not have flown at market price, but are willing to fly for some price above where marginal cost == marginal revinue. You win, The airlines win...the only case where I think there would be losers are if enough people start using priceline that the airlines can effectively raise their "normal" rates to capture monopolistic rents, knowing that displaced puchasers will still buy at their own price level.
Warning: I haven't given this much thought.
Of course, taxing traditional business and not eBusiness can set up a negative externality that will artificially increase business on the net.
It would be best (in welfare terms) if the internets advancement in the business arena could be secured from things such as lowering of transaction costs and moving variable costs to fixed costs, and not due to tax based incentives.
As many other people point out, this externality disproportionately affects the less wealthy, making it a double slam in terms of public policy.
If you are an economist and interested in taxation and eCommerce, the WTO has put out two "research documents" on this (vis a vis international taxation), the most recent of which came out in 97 and is probably the most cogent thing I have read on the topic. I don't know if it can be ordered online, but if so, check out www.wto.org. If you are interested, I can dig the book up from my colleague and find you ordering information.
After rereading what I wrote, I feel I should add an addendum.
While 100% Free trade may not be an optimal solution, "Free-er" trade would undeniably be a good thing.
One thing that I think is interesting about anti-WTO arguments is that many of them are along the lines of "The WTO is a servant to Multi-National firms". Multi-Nationals are the ones who want tariffs in place as they allow them to affect price pressures, and allow companies that would otherwise be competitors (say GM and Honda) to cartelize.
Ah well...its late and I'm rambling.
Its funny to watch all the Econ-Nerds come out of the woodwork with this WTO stuff. I too am alleged to be a scholar of finance and economics, although I pay to be so rather than get paid to be so. :)
Now I don't want to discuss propoganda or sociology(point 1), civil dissobedience and violence (point 3), or 3rd world/"sweatshop" labor- basicly because I'm on the same page as you are.
I am familiar with most of the economics arguments surrounding trade: and I really don't think that the free-traders are winning. Even the most ardent free trade supporters (Krugman, etc) will admit that their arguments only hold water in the general case, where there is perfect competition, no externalities, and regular economic conditions (decreasing returns to scale, etc). I would be hard pressed to name an import or export sector where those assumptions would be true. Certainly not the hot button industries : aircraft, automobile, textiles, agriculture.
Our (US) current administrations viewpoint revolves around "Fair Trade" (another loaded phrase), which is probably a little more "sane", but these people, (and the managed trade club), are IMO off base if they apply their policies without a case by case analysis. I think it could be fairly easy to show that most of the places where we see international trade in general are monopolistic to some extent, and therefor must be treated as such to come up with optimal trade policies.
All that you said about economic transition costs, short term costs, etc. are valid. But I am saying that even if you wiped the board of all the sidebar issues (short term costs, distrobutional effects, uncaptured values, etc), simply endorsing free trade across the board would most likely be a mistake.
I think this free trade "myth" is perpetuated because it is the best simple solution. Which is to say, it is better for someone to espouse free trade than protectionism, given that they don't have the time/inclination to look at the details of the trade patterns, or trade theory in general. In other words, I think the free trade argument is the start of rational economics, but not the end.
Again, I apologise for the tone of my earlier post- usually when I get upset like that it is indicative of a lack of understanding on my part.
IMO, this is the best part of your good post. With that out of the way, let me add my caveat. :)
Certain globalization will result in cultural change. But what ways of life are worth maintaining at the expense of illiteracy, poverty and disease?
The problem is that some non-economic goals do not have expenses in terms of illiteracy, poverty, or desease. They only cost productivity. To the extent that productivity is tied to standard of living, there is an argument against this. Still, that should be left for the country to decide, rather than the trading partner. Raging against globalization is not the solution here, but neither is an across the board elimination of the ability to engage in active policy making. I believe exceptions must be embraced, though I don't know how to restrict strategic inefficiencies without strong concepts like parity of negotiation. (Which solves one problem and creates another).
Losing the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest is painful, and should be avoided, but we should also work to prevent mass murder at the hands of despots.
Apples and oranges. These things are not mutually exclusive (which I do not doubt you are aware of), but I think towards the end of the post you fall into "sloganism"...The future of mankind is with transparency...not with petty xenophobic nationistic views. Them's propoganda words (reguardless of the truth about transparency).
Of course, I generate more heat than light usually, so let me conclude with : I like your post. :)
Nevermind the millions of dollars this cost Seattle.
Millions of dollars is piddly compared to the numbers that we are talking about when it comes to international trade. Millions of dollars are insigificant if you try to quantify the externalities associated with environmental degredation. If you are dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars, you are getting closer, if you are talking billions of dollars, I would be listening, but when we piss away tens of billions of dollars in a single bad trade policy (read: The japanese auto VER), I just can't care about "millions of dollars".
Nevermind the fact that the protestors blocked the downtown area off for several days.
Yep, that is what protesters do. Go ahead and add a few million dollars to your total- I don't mind.
Nevermind the fact that there are sound economic arguments for free trade.
Unless you are dealing with perfect competition, and no "large country" effects on international prices, free trade is a bad idea. Of course, finding the appropriate levels of intervention is difficult, but free trade has been shown to be suboptimal. If you ignore the rest of my post, listen to this. I'll give you some references on this if you would like to do some reading.
Nevermind the fact that many stores were looted and vandalized.Nevermind the fact that Seattle has never been a very entrenched city
All of this is irrelevant. Those protestors had points that are more important than "millions of dollars". To ignore those points because of demographics, collateral damage, or general distaste for non multinational solutions would be a serious mistake. You don't have to join in the anti-WTO ranks...just consider the arguments seriously.
I apologize for the tone of my post: this really upset me. I agree with what you said concerning 3rd world labor standards, but what the original poster said about the middle class acting as a stablizing force in society is true. You attacked it very strongly using arguments that are questionable. Of course, ranting makes me look like the asshole. For what its worth, nothing personal. :/
I dissagree.
The heart of the issue lies in the balance betweent the public good of the information released under IP protection, and the cost of the monopoly that IP law provides. All framed in the context of international enforcement.
My biggest issue is that it doesn't seem clear to me that there is unimpeachable evidence on either side of the IP debate, and yet we (The United States) feel justified in exporting our IP philosophy to the rest of the world.
FWIW, I think trade policy can kill as effectively as military policy (conflict). The difference is that its a lot easier to slide questionable trade policy by "the public" than it is questionable military policy.
Upon rereading, I agree. The shifting is non-infringing (although it is not clear to me that this is a fair use exclusion).
Thanks!
This is kinda moot, but copying for your own use isn't "fair use". Time-displacement, or more generally media-displacement is infringement, but is protected from prosecution via the betamax case that went before the supreme court (84?).
IANAL, but check this out for some background...
The dynamic argument against this is that as companies do this, economic pressures will raise the price of labor. As they raise productivity, their standard of living will increase, etc. etc. Can you provide a reasonable argument against that?
There are numerous data that shows that capital immobility severely limits corperate incentives to relocate based on fluctuating incentives such as wage rates. Do you have thoughts on this?
I'm not saying you're totally off base, but without addressing said criticisms, I don't see these anti-WTO arguments as having as much legs as such things as sovereignty, environmental zero-sum game and pollution tolerance, transparency, and counter-incentive arguments.
Sorry...while I don't like the WTO, (and I despise WIPO), I think that the labor arguments against it are actually the weakest.
Heh. The AC's are all over this one. Unfortunately, there isn't much but rhetoric flowing around this thread.
Free trade is not the best way to economic growth, it is simply a way.
It would be a serious mistake to discount the points that the protesters bring up. I think most of them are fairly valid: Removing trade restrictions operates without reguard to non-economic agendas (such as social justice).
What we would like to see is that Nations would set their restrictions at levels that only protected those things which they see as non-economicly advantageous, and that otherwise they would keep their borders open. Unfortunately, strategic and dynamic pressure will push trade boundries up if left alone. GATT solves that problem with the "Most Favored Nation" concept, but it does so at the expense of the member nations soveriegnty.
Also, while freeing trade is in aggregate good, it doesn't deal with distrobutional issues, nor does it deal (properly) with non-competitive markets. (It can be shown that most trade occurs within oligopolistic or monopolistic frameworks).
Bottom line: Its a very complex issue and the only reason that the big boys (Krugman, Baghwati, etc.) take polarizing positions is that they can define clearer arguments that way. When it comes to individual policy implementation, sweeping statements on either side of the (free trade v. fair trade) debate hedge heavily.
OK, This is probably shitpicking since I think you know what you are talking about, but...
Technically, when you amend the constitution, it counteracts previous content. For example, income taxation was specificly non-constitutional until it was amended into law as a way to pay back our war debts. A treaty, while considered "The Law of The Land" doesn't invalidate limitations explicitely listed in the constitution. Again an example, if the rules against reverse engineering in the Waus* agreement (whatever that thing was called) were found to violate the first amendment, the treaty would be rendered unenforceable within the US.
Again, I think you know this, and I think we are just crossing meanings on "ammend".
Please don't take this wrong, since I side with "the other guy", but I'm going to take this on in hopes you can educate me. :)
The fact is that the nations without a good patent system have no significant home developed technologies.
Are you suggesting that the countries listed have no significant (homegrown) "technologies"? I would think that the innovation in countries such as this would be of a more incremental nature (since they can just rip off the truely technological leaping advancements), but I see incremental innovation as an important kind of innovation to society as a whole. I guess I would like to say that these countries would effectively specialize in incremental innovation, giving them some efficiency gains in that area which could be realized as other countries copied the ideas back.
True enough - BUT the DEVELOPMENT of new products is usually colored by the issue of patentability. XYZ Inc. is NOT going to sink $500 million in R&D...[snip]...Without patents industrial R&D spending would decline in the US to 20% of it's current levels.
Can you give me some sources for these numbers? I have been looking for evidence to support my arguments against patents and have been unable to find good economic sources on either side of the issue. I think the core of this is that the measurability of innovation is limited to secondary evidences. But again, I have gone looking for any evidence, and so far come up empty handed.
[Discussion on Reverse Engineering]
A couple of things. It isn't clear to me that the legal limitations against reverse engineering are enforceable contract clauses (at least until we passed laws that validated them). I'm sure its arguable on both sides, so I'll leave that alone for now. Also, the concept of trade secret is still valid in the "no patent" world, and to the extent that one can be maintained, the monopolistic gain can be collected. I think the fundamental question is : Do patents speed up technological developement enough justify their social cost?
I guess my big issue is this: All sides of this debate like to talk about things like "300 year records of [ success || failure ]", but I don't see anyone throwing out data, and it seems to me that the anectdotal evidence kinda swings both ways. (My opinion is against patents, but my opinion doesn't count for much- Yet. =) ).
Good posts from both of you...
Absolutely. That was what I was trying to say. (Like I said, there are probably people who are WAY better at constitutional interpretation than me, but I have not been corrected to date). =)
Thus a Treaty overrides state law, but not the US Constitution.
Sorry to be ambiguous, I'm a bad communicator. =(
Excellent links.
The whole concept of patenting genetic algorythms (and chemical structures) seems highly suspect to me, but I imagine that the forces that support them are extremely well connected and well funded.
I'm pretty much for in favor of the WTO keeping a hands off approach to issues that touch Environmental or Social issues directly, but I don't see a way around this when it comes to patents. The whole TIPS thing seems very problematic, and I'm glad it came across slashdot.
US Constitution: Article VI, Section 2: (retyped, forgive typos)
This Consitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Consitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwistanding.
The relative phrase is "...Constitution or Laws of any State..."
That is state constitution, or state laws.
If I'm wrong: Smack me down, but I think this is a common misconception. Treaties do not override the Federal Constitution.
Paul Krugman said (paraphrased)"You go to a doctor for medical advice, and you go to a lawyer for legal advice, so why do people take economic advice from people who aren't economists?".
Of course Krugman doesn't make many freinds. =)
In any event, I agree. What was more interesting was the classification of software as "good" or "service". MS favors the status quo of "good", while leveraging a licensing scheme. You purchase the "licence to use a good" rather than a service. Seems kind of a thin line to me.
On textiles, I'm not sure that textiles are the most heavily subsidized, but the MFA (Multi Fibre Agreement) is certainly the most complicated stack of international law I think you could find.
Tariffs are one way to achieve an import restriction. There are many effective non-tariff barriers. Hell, If I ran a exporting country, no one would ever tariff me: I would immediately enact VERs to counter the effects of the tariff (or at least to reap their "rent").
My whole point is that tariffs just don't matter that much. If you have a non-economic goal that you want to support (say environmental protection), you can simply use a non-tariff measure to achieve your goal without WTO intervention.
Of course, I would argue that this is a bad idea. Trade simply isn't that important. Maybe 3% of GDP tops (see Krugman on this). If you have a policy in mind, you should target that policy directly, not through a secondary channel. Find a political solution through a treaty, don't eat the welfare inefficiency associated with price control.
As an aside, I would say that the "credible threat" of tariffs are actually more important than tariffs themselves. But now I'm rambling... =)
I can't really think of any good reasons to use a tariff except possibly leveraging "big country" buying power to optimize trade levels. There are almost always better ways of changing behaviors or seeking non-economic solutions than tariffs.
To the extent that the WTO reduces tariffs, I would say it is a success, however, you can see in economic data that non-tariff barriers have actually risen at higher rates than tariff barriers have fallen. As a matter of fact, there are so many ways of duplicating the effect of a tariff, without actually imposing one that I would argue that the WTO is practically ineffectual as an economic machine.
What the WTO is efficacious at is political change. (I'm not sure what this is worth, but I think it is true).
I guess the long and the short of it is that the WTO serves a very valid purpose, doesn't effectively limit the soveriegnty of the nation, and actually does some good.
I think you are reading this wrong.
What they are saying is that treaties, like the constitution, are "the law of the land" and override the state constitutions and state law.