I have the impression that this effort to increase the IT labor pool is being undertaken as much for the specific purpose of undermining compensation in the IT industry as it is anything else.
Of course it is. So what?
IT people are among the highest paid workers in the country. No, we don't make as much money as doctors or lawyers, but I think they're over-paid too. (and they have a lot more schooling than we do)
I'm quite happy being well-paid, but I don't consider continuing that state of affairs a moral imperative. Every company tries to pay its workers as little as possible. And importing foreign workers is one way of doing that.
Companies are not infinite reserviors of money. If they have to pay high prices for their workers, they *will* find a way to pass that cost on to their customers. They have to, or they'll lose money and go out of business. Likewise, if the cost of IT people falls, that lower cost will be passed on to customers by inter-firm competition. This won't happen immediately, but it will happen.
To put this in perspective, it helps to think about it in a context other than national interest. Imagine instead that we're all Californians, and California didn't allow people in Alabama into the state except under certain conditions. Imagine there is a bill before the California legislature to open up the border and let more workers in.
You could make all the same arguments-- the evil silicon valley corporations are trying to drive down wages, the Alabama workers will work for next to nothing, etc. Yet no one is proposing that people be restricted from state to state. It is widely recognized that the free movement of labor is beneficial to the nation's economy.
The same is true of international migration. The migration of workers from poor to wealthy countries helps to even out wage imbalances and ensures that workers go where their skills are needed most. Immigration restrictions harm the economies of both nations-- the wealthier one because they have too much capital and not enough labor, and the poorer one because they have the opposite problem.
Do I have sympathy for IT workers that get pay cuts or get laid off? Absolutely. But I think the dangers are exaggerated, and more importantly, I think we need to keep some perspective. None of us are on the verge of starving. Most workers in the world would kill for jobs like the ones many of us have. I think we can afford to share the wealth a little, and to let those with the misfortune to be born in another country the same opportunities we can enjoy. Yes, we might not get raises that are quite as big, but the loses we might suffer are dwarfed by the enourmous benefits to the workers in other countries.
As I said, there isn't a fixed pool of jobs. As the number of workers increases, wages will drop, and employers will hire more workers at the lower prices. This is the way it works in every other labor market (and in every market for that market) and there's no reason to think it won't happen here.
If programmers cost a hundred grand a company might only hire three programmers. If wages drop to eighty grand, a company might decide to hire a couple more. This interplay of supply and demand is what determines wages, and it ensures that everyone who wants a job can get one.
A sudden increase in labor supplies will cause dislocations in the short run, so perhaps opening up the borders all at once isn't the best plan. But in the long run I don't see why tech workers in the US shouldn't compete on an equal footing with those in other countries.
What's wrong with looking after my own paycheck are we all running around saying how it's a dog eat dog competitive world?
Because those evil foreign workers need jobs just as much as you do, and I don't see what business you have telling them that they should continue working shit jobs in their own companies so that you can continue getting nice fat raises.
Every company wants to hire cheaper labor, just as every customer wants to buy cheaper products. That's the way the market works. Excluding certain workers from the labor pool does help those inside the labor pool, but it hurts everyone else, including other workers, consumers, and the employer.
The "the evil foreigners are going to steal our jobs" line is xenophobia, pure and simple. There is no logical reason to exclude workers simply because they happened to be born in another country. Companies ought to seek the lowest-paid workers. It ensures that those that fetch the highest price go where they are needed most. If they can do the same work you can for half the salary, then maybe it's you who is over paid. And if they can't do the job as well as you can, the company that's hiring them will suffer for it in the long run.
Every company seeks the cheapest worker that will get the job done. That's the way the market work, and it's good for consumers, since products can be made cheaply.
However, if companies hire workers who aren't able to do a good job, they'll suffer for it. If you're right that older programmers are under-appreciated, that's a profit opportunity for firms willing to pay the premium for the best workers. At some point companies will start discovering this, and those that do first will snap up the best prospects and gain a competitive advantage.
If, on the other hand, a lot of older programmers simply haven't kept their skills up to date and really aren't any better than the newly minted college grads, then the problem may be that they're expecting to be paid more than they're worth. Just because you're forty doesn't mean you automatically deserve to earn twice what a 25-year old would earn. If a 25-year-old is able to do your job for half price, why should you stop him.
That's not the way the labor market works. In a tight labor market like ours, there are thousands of companies that are short-staffed and will snap up just about anyone with skills that applies. And even when those desperate positions are filled, there are plenty more jobs that employers will offer if salaries come down a bit. Jobs are not a fixed quantity. The labor market responds to supply and demand just like every other market.
There's more to the world than US tech workers. We need to look at the benefit to the whole nation, not just our own paychecks. No programmer is in danger of starving.
We have plenty of labor in the United States and we don't really need anymore.
According to whom? And by what standard? The people who want to hire these people clearly have a need for more labor, or they wouldn't go to the expense of importing them.
I want a fair and equal chance in my own country instead of getting shafted.
What about the "fair and equal" chance of those not fortunate enough to grow up here in the USA? Are there interests irrelevant simply because they don't vote here? You have more than a fair and equal chance. If you're like most of us in the tech industry, you have it ludicrously easy-- getting paid handsomely for work many of us would do in our spare time even if we weren't getting paid. It's the height of arrogance to pretend that we're a poor downtrodden class that can't afford to compete with a few foreigners.
I for one welcome more high tech workers to the US. If they can do useful work, they have every right to come here and make a living. Those who want to keep them out in order to further inflate their own paychecks are narrow-minded and selfish.
The fact is, the practicesation you describe are already being done now, except it's by the employers who have an interest in maximizing profits at the expense of employee and consumer.
Sure, and it's bad for the economy just as it is when workers do it. But it only works with government help. Without aid from the government, cartels tend to fall apart. The real danger is that the government will step in and institutionalize the cartels (as it has with unions, as well as cable companies, phone companies, pharmaceuticals, etc) and force everyone to respect them. At that point, the cartels become harmful to the economy.
The same is true of an IT cartel-- initially it might be beneficial in standardizing working conditions and whatnot, but it would be likely to then start lobbying for those standards to be written into law, which in the long run would be bad for everyone.
The fact that businesses form coercive cartels doesn't mean that labor should do likewise. Two wrongs don't make a right. And the rhetoric of "us versus them" is highly misleading-- cartels don't just hurt the customers, it also hurts those who are forcibly excluded from the market. In the case of labor, unions exclude new entrants from the labor market, creating artificial poverty. Unions harm both workers outside an industry and employers at the expense of the workers in the industry.
Lower pay wasn't an option. I had pushed myself to come back to work early because other employees were donating their vacation time since the company didn't have sick leave. Came in one morning and by noon I was gone. No warning, no severence, no nothin'.
You have my sympathy. It sounds like your employer was a jerk, and he probably lost a valuable employee and will be hurt financially for it. If you're right that your replacement was useless, then this is the sort of poor choice that gets punished by market forces-- your employer will discover in a few weeks that your replacement is inept, and will have to go out and pay someone else more money to do the job you already were doing.
Unless you wear a cape and the wind blows through your hair (if you still have some - hair, not wind) it gets harder to land on your feet.
Why is that? Is it just that you are used to doing whatever you already did, and it's harder to learn new skills? Is it that you don't have time to keep up with the latest? Is it that you're just not as productive as you used to be?
If employers hire on the basis of skill (and although I'm sure there are exceptions, I think a lot do) then you will be able to find a job as long as you are able to do useful work. If employers do not hire on the basis of skill, then I'd be interested to know what criteria they use and why.
If, on the other hand, you are not as skilled or productive as the fresh-out-of-school set, then I don't see why you should expect to make any more than them. You are paid to do useful work, after all. I don't see why the simple fact that you are older entitles you to a bigger paycheck.
I'm not the least bit unconcerned. I understand that bad things happen to people, and I can certainly sympathize with their plight. But we weren't talking about the fact that it sucks to have cancer. We were talking about why companies fire old people and hire young ones. And my point is that it's unreasonable to require that an employer take care of employees out of the goodness of their hearts. If they do, great. A compassionate employer is an added job benefit.
But I don't see why a job should necessarily be considered a welfare program. Your employer agrees to pay you money in exchange for labor. It might be nice to have him take care of you when you're sick, but I see no reason we should assume that that's the function of an employer, any more than it's the function of a mechanic or a grocer.
The issue is not whether compassion is a good thing. I think it is. The issue is whether paying someone to do work makes him legally or morally responsible for his health and welfare. I don't think it should.
Businesses are tools for efficient production. They do this extremely well. I think they should stay that way, and that charitable functions should be performed by other elements of society-- family, church, charity, etc. Businesses are there to turn a profit, and that's what they should do.
BTW, if you are so concerned about the welfare of those foreign workers who want jobs here, why aren't you agitating to make it easier for them to change jobs once they come in on an H-1B visa?
I am. Well, not directly, but I'm an active member of the Libertarian Party, which advocates open borders and opposes work restrictions on foreigners. I would much prefer to have a completely open immigration policy in which foreign workers could work wherever they like without asking the government's permission.
You've just had surgery for cancer and are finishing treatment. Your productivity is lower than pre-cancer, but improving weekly as your strength returns. The company is small and is taking a pretty hard hit on group insurance because two of their employees are undergoing cancer treatment. They do a little fishing and find someone (freshly trained) who will work for half and has the energy to get twice as much done (quality doesn't enter the picture somehow).
I have plenty of sympathy for your condition, but companies are not charities. You are paid to do a job, and as you said yourself, you weren't getting as much done as you used to. I see no reason for them not to reduce your pay at the least.
As for the health insurance thing, I think it's another example of why employers shouldn't be paying for peoples' health insurance. Just give employees a bigger paycheck and let them buy their own health insurance. The reason this doesn't happen is because the tax code gives tax breaks to employers who pay for health care but not employees who pay for it directly.
If your replacement does lower-quality work than you, then your employer got what he deserves. If he was in fact qualified to replace you, then I don't see why he shouldn't do so. Again, I understand that it was difficult for you, and I certainly wouldn't want to be in your position. But your employer didn't cause you to get cancer, and I don't see a reason they should pay you for work you're not doing.
It took me nine months to find something new. Half that time I was still undergoing treatment.
OK, but you did find something new. That doesn't sound like what the original poster was talking about, wherein older people cannot get jobs at all. Anyone of any age can get sick. Older people may get sick more often, but it's not fundamentally an age issue.
By establishing common standards, a guild system could be of benefit to foreign and domestic workers, as well as the public at large and employers who are willing to pay for the excellent service they receive.
In principle this might be true. In practice this isn't how these things work. Unions and guilds tend to promote the self-interest of their current members. That self-interest lies in restricting the supply of workers.
You can see this in the ferocious opposition of Unions to immigration, free trade, and the consistent preference for measures that would restrict the supply of workers in their field. This is a big reason they support restrictive liscencing laws, many times unrelated to the actual job at hand. It's why they support minimum wage laws, to keep unskilled workers from competing for jobs.
An IT guild would probably work to restrict access to the IT field. If it were a strictly voluntary organization, I might support it, but the history of that sort of thing is clear. The AMA restricts the supply of doctors, for example. In the long run, it's bad for the industry, because it politicizes the workplace and makes things unnecessarily rigid. In principle a guild could be a good thing,but I don't think it would be in practice.
the only people that benefit is the executives, more $ for them. Less for everybody else.
That's just not true. A larger and more diverse labor force is good for the economy, because it allows more specialization of labor and therefore greater overall productivity. A worker who is willing to work for lower wages is essentially putting more into the economy and taking less out of it.
Does this benefit accrue entirely to the employee's company? Perhaps initially, but that's where competition comes in. If just one company got cheaper labor, he'd probably keep his prices the same and take the difference in profit. But if the whole industry has cheaper labor, competition will drive down prices, which directly benefits consumers.
In addition, lower wages make feasible projects that would otherwise be infeasible. The more programmers there are, the more software that can be written.
Yea, great, we support the world, give them jobs, and they take they're money back to their country.
Again, this is economically nonsense. The workers come over here and do useful work for people in this country, and in return they get money that entitles them to a share of US production. How are we harmed by this? Money is just a little rectangle of paper. What makes it valuable is the goods and services that back them up. It's just a trade: the immigrant gives us some labor, and we give him some goods and services. It's no different than when a US worker does the same.
This chest beating about "stealing our jobs" and "buy American" is racist nonsense. It doesn't benefit me any more when an American gets a given job than when a foreigner does. And protectionism harms consumers more than anyone-- businesses just pass their higher costs on to consumers. By "buying American" and imposing restrictions on foreign labor, we are only narrowing our potential workforce and driving up prices for our own workers. It benefits no one and harms everyone.
cheaper salaries
Why are they cheaper? If it's because they are less qualified, then that makes perfect sense. If it's because you are over-paid, you'll get no sympathy from me. You're paid to do a job, not to warm a chair. If you keep your skills current, you should have no trouble getting paid well. If you stop learning new skills, you shouldn't expect to get paid any better than a college student.
Nothing better than seeing a father of 2 at age 45 out of work, hey, no skin off your nose.
Why is he out of work? Can he do the same job as a college grad? Then he should be able to get the same pay as a college grad. And probably more, since he's got 20 years of experience. If he got fired because he hasn't kept his skills current and is relying on his seniority to keep him in a job, then I have little sympathy. I'm 20. If I can do the same job as you, I expect to be paid the same as you, regardless of how long you've been warming a chair. If you are more qualified than me, then you should (and will) be paid more.
Second, everyone should look after their best interests without infringing on the rights of others. Companies are importing these people as SLAVE LABOR. They noticed that they can press them into situations that violate US labor laws out of fear of deportation. This should not be tollerated.
There's a simple solution: loosen up immigration accross the board. Then immigrants who get mistreated can go elsewhere with their skills. I absolutely agree that H1-B visas are imperfect, but they're better than nothing.
To say that we can't expand H1-B visas because that would be bad for the immigrants getting them is nonsense. If they are willing to undergo abuse to stay in the country, that says something about the situation they're escaping. We should absolutely do things to prevent that kind of abuse (and I think open borders is the best solution) but in the meantime it's paternalistic to keep potential workers out "for their own good."
Unions are simply cartels. They drive up wages and benefits by restricting supply. This is great if you are one of the ones who get the jobs. It sucks, though, if you are one of those "cheap foreign" workers who is excluded.
It always amazes me that people act as though the interests of the foreign workers is irrelevant. It's all about me, me, me. We have it pretty damn good here. So what if foreign workers will drive down our wages a bit? It's drive up their wages a *lot.* That's why they're willing to come over here. More to the point, it'll benefit the rest of society because prices for IT services will be cheaper.
Something to think about, someday you may not want to work a 70 hour week, you may have a family, you may grey hair or be balding, do you want to be replaced by an undercutting youngster or foreigner?
If you do useful work, your employer (unless he's stupid) will continue to keep you on. If you act as though what you learned in college is all you need to know, then you deserve to be fired. If you know your stuff, why would your employer want to fire you? You've got 10 years of experience, you're a proven worker, and they don't have to train you in like they would a new person.
If the reason is that you are paid to much, well, maybe you're over-paid. It works both ways-- the fact that you're older than me doesn't mean that you should automatically get the best jobs at the best wages. If I can do the same job as you, and I'm willing to do it for less money, why shouldn't I get the job? And why shouldn't you accept the wage I'm willing to take to keep yours?
I guess I'm confused as to what the issue is with older "balding" workers having it so tough. Why would an employer want to fire his most experienced employees for a kid? Salary? Skills? Those things are both in your control. If you're not willing to put in the time to keep your skills current, then perhaps you don't deserve a big raise every year. But to demand an advantage in the workplace simply on the basis of age is unfair to us and the industry as a whole.
And when it's your choice being limited and your wallet being hit, I'm sure you'll feel the same.
Who decides what counts as a "hit in the wallet," and by what standard? Every company charges as much as they can for their products. And every purchase is a "hit" to your wallet. At what point does a price go from fair profit to unfair "gouging?"
The People of the State of California must demonstrate that costs were higher than would normally be if there were competition.
How can they possibly know this? No one knows what's going to happen in the next 6 months in this industry. How could you possibly extrapolate these sorts of "what-if" scenarios several years into the past? And even if you could, what did you expect Microsoft to do? Even granting that they did some unethical things to their competitors, are they supposed to set their prices based on theoretical models of what prices "might have been?"
This isn't an easy thing to prove
That's a massive understatement. I'd make the much stronger statement that it's impossible to do so. No one can know what might have been. You can guess and make plausible arguments for your guess, but to expect Microsoft to be held responsible for the guesses of a bunch of economists is absurd.
The burden this sort of lawsuit would place on companies if it were taken seriously would be enourmous. Every company with a large market share would have to hire an economist to make economic models and figure out how much they are allowed to charge without getting sued. And like with antitrust itself, the rules would change every time they go before a new judge or a new administration.
The result is that most companies simply ignore antitrust law and pray that the DOJ doesn't decide to go after them. Trying to actually comply with such a vague and overreaching body of law would make it impossible for them to compete in the marketplace. Microsoft has rightly decided that it's more important to stay ahead in the marketplace and fight off legal challenges in court than to invest all their energies in complying with the whims of the DOJ.
Well, if you don't want governmental regulation overseeing markets and businesses in MINUTE DETAIL, then you are voting for the old order of private parties keeping each other in line by suing in court.
This depends on how the court system is arranged. In an ideal legal system, all the courts do is enforce property rights-- if you firebomb my house I take you to court for damages.
What we have here is something entirely different-- a transaction that both sides voluntarily agreed to in the past is being retroactively declared "unfair" and Microsoft is being made to pay for damages. My question is: even granting that they deserve punishment for antitrust violations (which I don't) how was Microsoft supposed to know what the "correct" price for it's products was? *Every* business charges as much as it can for its products. To expect Microsoft to suddenly say "oh, we're a monopoly now. We're not allowed to make a profit any more" is absurd.
The software business is an extremely high-risk business. You pour a lot of money into a product at the front end, gambling that you'll be able to recoup a lot of money in the long run. If you bet well, you make your money back and then some. If not, you lose money.
If companies are ethically or legally prevented from making "excessive" profits on successful products, why should they take big risks on products that might flop? And how is a company to know how much profit is "too much?"
In practice, these decisions are made by economists with wildly varying assumptions, and therefore come to wildly varying conclusions. There is no objective way to determine what price a product "should" cost.
So if prices become subject to lawsuits, then yes, you'll clog up courts. But those who believe that companies should be retroactively punished for setting their prices "too high" have only themselves to blame for this congestion. If monopolistic behavior justifies government intervention (and I think it seldom does) it should be applied to future behavior and should lay out clear rules. I shouldn't try to second-guess past pricing decisions that are intrinsicly fuzzy and impossible to quantify perfectly.
I suggest everyone go out and get Mac OS X. The graphics model will be resolution-independent and vector-based. In principle this means that you'll be able to switch to any resolution you want, and the OS will use those extra pixels to make everything look extra pretty.
While this is true, it's not the only consideration. You can also do altivec optimization at the OS level. From what I've read, many of the beautiful (and probably annoying) animations in OS X are much, much faster on a G4, probably owing to AltiVec. My guess is Apple is busy optimizing the low-level graphics routines to take advantage of AltiVec, and so all apps will get a speed boost when on a G4 Mac since much of an apps time is spent on graphics anyway.
As for whether AltiVec was a bad decision, I'm not an expert on the subject but the impression I've gotten is more that Moto is incompetent than that AltiVec fundamentally limits clock speeds. There are rumors that IBM could produce faster G4's if they wanted to but their contracts with Moto prevents them from doing so without Moto's permission. This is touched on briefly in the article. If this rumor is true, it my represent a problem of petty bickering rather than a technological failing of AltiVec.
"Corporatism" is a straw man. Throughout history, those with power and influence have conspired to profit at the expense of others. In feudal times, this was done by monarchies. In communist nations, Communist Party members use their influence to oppress the rest of society.
Today in the US, the rich and powerful make pilgrimages to Washington (or hire lobbyists) to get special favors from Washington. The clash of special interests permeates every aspect of government and every policy it enacts. Corporations battle it out over access to telecom, antitrust law, more military handouts, environmental regulations, subsidies, tax credits, regulations to restrict competitors, etc.
Jon Katz conflates this clash of interest groups with the market. He is wrong. Indeed, the corporate state we have today is the antithesis of a true free market-- one in which no one gets special favors from the government.
Indeed, this clash of interest groups is a fundamental feature of "economic democracy." People don't suddenly become un-selfish when they get into government, they simply pursue their self-interest by more direct means, means that tend to be far more destructive than those pursued in the private sector. In the marketplace, you must convince millions of consumers to use your product rather than that of your competitors. In Washington, you can simply get a subsidy or pass a law that outlaws your competition.
The difference between the free market and democracy is not that one promotes selfishness and the other promotes the public good. On the contrary, the difference is that under the free market shields individuals from this kind of political pressure, while "democratic" economic systems give corporations a direct and easy way to benefit themselves at the expense of others.
The problem with our educational system is that it *is* outside the marketplace. Rather than being independent private organizations accountable to their students and donors, most schools recieve their funding from the government, and as such are more susceptible from corporate pressure. The clash of interests groups we see on college campuses is not because there is too much commercialism on campus. On the contrary, college campuses are divisive and slavishly serve corporate interests precisely because they are government institutions and as such are more susceptible to pressure from the powerful.
A truly private system would probably still serve some corporate interests, but they would at least demand a fair payment in return. And colleges that produced faulty research because of corporate pressure would find itself losing students and donors due to the bad PR, and would be forced to shape up or go out of business. No comparable mechanism exists in a government-run system. Schools are guarunteed their money, and so they have no incentive to preserve the integrity of their research or their independence from corporate donors.
Libertarianism champions the "free enterprise" model which mostly panders to the greed, ignorance and fear of the general public.
Could you please elaborate? I'm really curious why you consider free markets to pander to ignorance and fear. Indeed, I think the precise opposite is true: governments tend to justify further interventions using fear and ignorance. Markets and prices are extremely efficient at producing and transmitting information from producers and consumers, while government tend to operate by obfuscating costs and benefits.
The libertarian wants to be unhindered in his activity to participate in market forces. This seems antithetical and inconsistant with theOpen Source method to me.
Again, not true at all. The hallmarks of free enterprise are competition and ruthless meritocracy. The good gets promoted, and the medocre and bad are weeded out. This seems to me an apt description of Open Source, which tends to rapidly adopt and propogate those code changes that work best.
Free markets are also characterized by a radical decentralization of economic decisions, just as Open Source is a radical decentralization of coding decisions.
The other posters answered this pretty well: the Mac has a lot more users that Linux/*BSD and they're more willing to pay money. But there's another reason as well: *nix is not a consumer platform.
I'm a CS major, and it still took me a weekend to get Linux working on my Mac, and another to get it to use the network properly. Granted, I'm a relative newby at this sort of thing, but if takes me two weekends, then 90% of computer users aren't going to be willing to use it at all.
Perhaps PC distros are better, but you still have to drop into a shell once in a while. When Red Hat comes out with a distro that allows a one-click install, and which has simple graphical configuration tools for all elements of the system, then it'll have some chance of capturing the broader consumer market. Even then, someone will have to unify the numerous window managers, graphical toolkits, and other libraries so users don't have to compile them themselves. And someone will have to write and enforce a set of consistent UI guidelines so that different apps work the same and don't confuse users.
In short, someone would have to do for Linux what Apple is now doing for BSD.
Since Linux is a hobbyist platform dedicated to development by volunteers and insistent on open source for everything, I can't see this happening. The tedious gruntwork of creating a complete, consistent, elegant desktop as Apple is doing with OS X isn't something that very many volunteers are going to want to do. And even if Red Hat or someone pays someone to do that, there is still the issue of interface consistency. Many existing Liinux apps are interface nightmares by Mac/Windoze standards. In order to make a viable consumer release many of these will have to be majorly re-written to conform to a common standard. Again, I can't see this happening.
So Linux makes a great low-end server and a decent hobbyist OS. It's not about to eclipse either Mac OS or Windows as a consumer desktop OS, though. I honestly don't think the hackers who write Linux understand what consumers want in their computers, and until they do, they aren't going to attract many non-geek users.
So if I tell you to drink arsenic and assure you that there is no evidence that arsenic is bad for you, and you drink it, then I am in no way responsible for your death?
The industry hasn't claimed it's not bad for you since the seventies. It simply has claimed that the evidence is inconclusive. A better analogy is if I give you a bottle of arsenic with a big old warning label on it, and say nothing about its safety or lack thereof. If you drink it, you're stupid.
Regardless of what Big Tobacco has said, it's no secret that cigarettes are bad for you. One of the big reasons that Big Tobacco has refused to acknowledge the bad side effects in court out of fear of liability. But anyone who smokes today should have known for 30 years that they are bad for you.
As for the rest of it, you are saying that because you believe that oil is going to be scarce in a specific number of years, you want to force car manufacturers to adopt a new technology that you think will work better. My point is: how do you know it will be better? How do you know it will be more efficient? There is no imminent crisis. It doesn't take 50 years to retool a factory. And when oil actually does start to get scarce, alternatives will be produced due to market incentives, with no intervention needed. If, on the other hand, we find more oil and continue to have plenty for 100 years, your forcing us to use untested technology may force unneeded costs on society for no reason.
You are creating a crisis where none exists. If companies are slow in switching over their factories when the oil runs out, they will lose business to those who switch earlier. Therefore once a viable alternative is available and ready, no government interference will be necessary to implement it. The fact that no alternative has arisen in the market place is evidence that no cost-effective alternative exists. There is simply nothing that can beat the price/performance ratio of gas.
Very true. Assuming that the crack being sold does not contain undisclosed impurities and the user is fully aware of the health risks, I don't think the crack dealer should have any legal responsiblity for the result. To say otherwise is to say that individuals are not responsible for the substances they ingest into their bodies.
If I choose to shoot up, that's my choice. I wouldn't expect anyone else, including the person who (at my request) provided me with that substance.
This is not to say that I approve of drug use by any means. And I'm not saying that drug dealing is the most honorable profession. But there's a big difference between personal tastes and legality. Regardless of my personal feelings about selling crack, I don't think it's right for me to impose my personal feelings on others. As long as all customers are voluntary and fully informed, I think drug dealers should be allowed to do their jobs without harrassment.
But if high overall demand from lots of people buying SUVs drives up prices, the people with efficient little cars have to pay more too, even though they contributed very little to the high demand.
I don't understand your point here. The SUV owners are paying through the nose to drive big cars. They are paying for their share of oil. Buying more of *anything* will drive up its price. That doesn't mean that the people who are paying more aren't paying their fair share.
The people who buy efficient cars are still making demands on a scarce resource-- oil. They should pay as high a per-gallon price as anyone else. The people who consume more gas pay more money for it, as they should. But I see no reason why they should pay a higher per-gallon rate for it. Causing higher prices isn't a legitimate externality unless you think people have a right to buy goods at a particular price.
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I have the impression that this effort to increase the IT labor pool is being undertaken as much for the specific purpose of undermining compensation in the IT industry as it is anything else.
Of course it is. So what?
IT people are among the highest paid workers in the country. No, we don't make as much money as doctors or lawyers, but I think they're over-paid too. (and they have a lot more schooling than we do)
I'm quite happy being well-paid, but I don't consider continuing that state of affairs a moral imperative. Every company tries to pay its workers as little as possible. And importing foreign workers is one way of doing that.
Companies are not infinite reserviors of money. If they have to pay high prices for their workers, they *will* find a way to pass that cost on to their customers. They have to, or they'll lose money and go out of business. Likewise, if the cost of IT people falls, that lower cost will be passed on to customers by inter-firm competition. This won't happen immediately, but it will happen.
To put this in perspective, it helps to think about it in a context other than national interest. Imagine instead that we're all Californians, and California didn't allow people in Alabama into the state except under certain conditions. Imagine there is a bill before the California legislature to open up the border and let more workers in.
You could make all the same arguments-- the evil silicon valley corporations are trying to drive down wages, the Alabama workers will work for next to nothing, etc. Yet no one is proposing that people be restricted from state to state. It is widely recognized that the free movement of labor is beneficial to the nation's economy.
The same is true of international migration. The migration of workers from poor to wealthy countries helps to even out wage imbalances and ensures that workers go where their skills are needed most. Immigration restrictions harm the economies of both nations-- the wealthier one because they have too much capital and not enough labor, and the poorer one because they have the opposite problem.
Do I have sympathy for IT workers that get pay cuts or get laid off? Absolutely. But I think the dangers are exaggerated, and more importantly, I think we need to keep some perspective. None of us are on the verge of starving. Most workers in the world would kill for jobs like the ones many of us have. I think we can afford to share the wealth a little, and to let those with the misfortune to be born in another country the same opportunities we can enjoy. Yes, we might not get raises that are quite as big, but the loses we might suffer are dwarfed by the enourmous benefits to the workers in other countries.
As I said, there isn't a fixed pool of jobs. As the number of workers increases, wages will drop, and employers will hire more workers at the lower prices. This is the way it works in every other labor market (and in every market for that market) and there's no reason to think it won't happen here.
If programmers cost a hundred grand a company might only hire three programmers. If wages drop to eighty grand, a company might decide to hire a couple more. This interplay of supply and demand is what determines wages, and it ensures that everyone who wants a job can get one.
A sudden increase in labor supplies will cause dislocations in the short run, so perhaps opening up the borders all at once isn't the best plan. But in the long run I don't see why tech workers in the US shouldn't compete on an equal footing with those in other countries.
What's wrong with looking after my own paycheck are we all running around saying how it's a dog eat dog competitive world?
Because those evil foreign workers need jobs just as much as you do, and I don't see what business you have telling them that they should continue working shit jobs in their own companies so that you can continue getting nice fat raises.
Every company wants to hire cheaper labor, just as every customer wants to buy cheaper products. That's the way the market works. Excluding certain workers from the labor pool does help those inside the labor pool, but it hurts everyone else, including other workers, consumers, and the employer.
The "the evil foreigners are going to steal our jobs" line is xenophobia, pure and simple. There is no logical reason to exclude workers simply because they happened to be born in another country. Companies ought to seek the lowest-paid workers. It ensures that those that fetch the highest price go where they are needed most. If they can do the same work you can for half the salary, then maybe it's you who is over paid. And if they can't do the job as well as you can, the company that's hiring them will suffer for it in the long run.
Every company seeks the cheapest worker that will get the job done. That's the way the market work, and it's good for consumers, since products can be made cheaply.
However, if companies hire workers who aren't able to do a good job, they'll suffer for it. If you're right that older programmers are under-appreciated, that's a profit opportunity for firms willing to pay the premium for the best workers. At some point companies will start discovering this, and those that do first will snap up the best prospects and gain a competitive advantage.
If, on the other hand, a lot of older programmers simply haven't kept their skills up to date and really aren't any better than the newly minted college grads, then the problem may be that they're expecting to be paid more than they're worth. Just because you're forty doesn't mean you automatically deserve to earn twice what a 25-year old would earn. If a 25-year-old is able to do your job for half price, why should you stop him.
That's not the way the labor market works. In a tight labor market like ours, there are thousands of companies that are short-staffed and will snap up just about anyone with skills that applies. And even when those desperate positions are filled, there are plenty more jobs that employers will offer if salaries come down a bit. Jobs are not a fixed quantity. The labor market responds to supply and demand just like every other market.
There's more to the world than US tech workers. We need to look at the benefit to the whole nation, not just our own paychecks. No programmer is in danger of starving.
We have plenty of labor in the United States and we don't really need anymore.
According to whom? And by what standard? The people who want to hire these people clearly have a need for more labor, or they wouldn't go to the expense of importing them.
I want a fair and equal chance in my own country instead of getting shafted.
What about the "fair and equal" chance of those not fortunate enough to grow up here in the USA? Are there interests irrelevant simply because they don't vote here? You have more than a fair and equal chance. If you're like most of us in the tech industry, you have it ludicrously easy-- getting paid handsomely for work many of us would do in our spare time even if we weren't getting paid. It's the height of arrogance to pretend that we're a poor downtrodden class that can't afford to compete with a few foreigners.
I for one welcome more high tech workers to the US. If they can do useful work, they have every right to come here and make a living. Those who want to keep them out in order to further inflate their own paychecks are narrow-minded and selfish.
The fact is, the practicesation you describe are already being done now, except it's by the employers who have an interest in maximizing profits at the expense of employee and consumer.
Sure, and it's bad for the economy just as it is when workers do it. But it only works with government help. Without aid from the government, cartels tend to fall apart. The real danger is that the government will step in and institutionalize the cartels (as it has with unions, as well as cable companies, phone companies, pharmaceuticals, etc) and force everyone to respect them. At that point, the cartels become harmful to the economy.
The same is true of an IT cartel-- initially it might be beneficial in standardizing working conditions and whatnot, but it would be likely to then start lobbying for those standards to be written into law, which in the long run would be bad for everyone.
The fact that businesses form coercive cartels doesn't mean that labor should do likewise. Two wrongs don't make a right. And the rhetoric of "us versus them" is highly misleading-- cartels don't just hurt the customers, it also hurts those who are forcibly excluded from the market. In the case of labor, unions exclude new entrants from the labor market, creating artificial poverty. Unions harm both workers outside an industry and employers at the expense of the workers in the industry.
Lower pay wasn't an option. I had pushed myself to come back to work early because other employees were donating their vacation time since the company didn't have sick leave. Came in one morning and by noon I was gone. No warning, no severence, no nothin'.
You have my sympathy. It sounds like your employer was a jerk, and he probably lost a valuable employee and will be hurt financially for it. If you're right that your replacement was useless, then this is the sort of poor choice that gets punished by market forces-- your employer will discover in a few weeks that your replacement is inept, and will have to go out and pay someone else more money to do the job you already were doing.
Unless you wear a cape and the wind blows through your hair (if you still have some - hair, not wind) it gets harder to land on your feet.
Why is that? Is it just that you are used to doing whatever you already did, and it's harder to learn new skills? Is it that you don't have time to keep up with the latest? Is it that you're just not as productive as you used to be?
If employers hire on the basis of skill (and although I'm sure there are exceptions, I think a lot do) then you will be able to find a job as long as you are able to do useful work. If employers do not hire on the basis of skill, then I'd be interested to know what criteria they use and why.
If, on the other hand, you are not as skilled or productive as the fresh-out-of-school set, then I don't see why you should expect to make any more than them. You are paid to do useful work, after all. I don't see why the simple fact that you are older entitles you to a bigger paycheck.
You seem pretty unconcerned now
I'm not the least bit unconcerned. I understand that bad things happen to people, and I can certainly sympathize with their plight. But we weren't talking about the fact that it sucks to have cancer. We were talking about why companies fire old people and hire young ones. And my point is that it's unreasonable to require that an employer take care of employees out of the goodness of their hearts. If they do, great. A compassionate employer is an added job benefit.
But I don't see why a job should necessarily be considered a welfare program. Your employer agrees to pay you money in exchange for labor. It might be nice to have him take care of you when you're sick, but I see no reason we should assume that that's the function of an employer, any more than it's the function of a mechanic or a grocer.
The issue is not whether compassion is a good thing. I think it is. The issue is whether paying someone to do work makes him legally or morally responsible for his health and welfare. I don't think it should.
Businesses are tools for efficient production. They do this extremely well. I think they should stay that way, and that charitable functions should be performed by other elements of society-- family, church, charity, etc. Businesses are there to turn a profit, and that's what they should do.
BTW, if you are so concerned about the welfare of those foreign workers who want jobs here, why aren't you agitating to make it easier for them to change jobs once they come in on an H-1B visa?
I am. Well, not directly, but I'm an active member of the Libertarian Party, which advocates open borders and opposes work restrictions on foreigners. I would much prefer to have a completely open immigration policy in which foreign workers could work wherever they like without asking the government's permission.
You've just had surgery for cancer and are finishing treatment. Your productivity is lower than pre-cancer, but improving weekly as your strength returns. The company is small and is taking a pretty hard hit on group insurance because two of their employees are undergoing cancer treatment. They do a little fishing and find someone (freshly trained) who will work for half and has the energy to get twice as much done (quality doesn't enter the picture somehow).
I have plenty of sympathy for your condition, but companies are not charities. You are paid to do a job, and as you said yourself, you weren't getting as much done as you used to. I see no reason for them not to reduce your pay at the least.
As for the health insurance thing, I think it's another example of why employers shouldn't be paying for peoples' health insurance. Just give employees a bigger paycheck and let them buy their own health insurance. The reason this doesn't happen is because the tax code gives tax breaks to employers who pay for health care but not employees who pay for it directly.
If your replacement does lower-quality work than you, then your employer got what he deserves. If he was in fact qualified to replace you, then I don't see why he shouldn't do so. Again, I understand that it was difficult for you, and I certainly wouldn't want to be in your position. But your employer didn't cause you to get cancer, and I don't see a reason they should pay you for work you're not doing.
It took me nine months to find something new. Half that time I was still undergoing treatment.
OK, but you did find something new. That doesn't sound like what the original poster was talking about, wherein older people cannot get jobs at all. Anyone of any age can get sick. Older people may get sick more often, but it's not fundamentally an age issue.
By establishing common standards, a guild system could be of benefit to foreign and domestic workers, as well as the public at large and employers who are willing to pay for the excellent service they receive.
In principle this might be true. In practice this isn't how these things work. Unions and guilds tend to promote the self-interest of their current members. That self-interest lies in restricting the supply of workers.
You can see this in the ferocious opposition of Unions to immigration, free trade, and the consistent preference for measures that would restrict the supply of workers in their field. This is a big reason they support restrictive liscencing laws, many times unrelated to the actual job at hand. It's why they support minimum wage laws, to keep unskilled workers from competing for jobs.
An IT guild would probably work to restrict access to the IT field. If it were a strictly voluntary organization, I might support it, but the history of that sort of thing is clear. The AMA restricts the supply of doctors, for example. In the long run, it's bad for the industry, because it politicizes the workplace and makes things unnecessarily rigid. In principle a guild could be a good thing,but I don't think it would be in practice.
the only people that benefit is the executives, more $ for them. Less for everybody else.
That's just not true. A larger and more diverse labor force is good for the economy, because it allows more specialization of labor and therefore greater overall productivity. A worker who is willing to work for lower wages is essentially putting more into the economy and taking less out of it.
Does this benefit accrue entirely to the employee's company? Perhaps initially, but that's where competition comes in. If just one company got cheaper labor, he'd probably keep his prices the same and take the difference in profit. But if the whole industry has cheaper labor, competition will drive down prices, which directly benefits consumers.
In addition, lower wages make feasible projects that would otherwise be infeasible. The more programmers there are, the more software that can be written.
Yea, great, we support the world, give them jobs, and they take they're money back to their country.
Again, this is economically nonsense. The workers come over here and do useful work for people in this country, and in return they get money that entitles them to a share of US production. How are we harmed by this? Money is just a little rectangle of paper. What makes it valuable is the goods and services that back them up. It's just a trade: the immigrant gives us some labor, and we give him some goods and services. It's no different than when a US worker does the same.
This chest beating about "stealing our jobs" and "buy American" is racist nonsense. It doesn't benefit me any more when an American gets a given job than when a foreigner does. And protectionism harms consumers more than anyone-- businesses just pass their higher costs on to consumers. By "buying American" and imposing restrictions on foreign labor, we are only narrowing our potential workforce and driving up prices for our own workers. It benefits no one and harms everyone.
cheaper salaries
Why are they cheaper? If it's because they are less qualified, then that makes perfect sense. If it's because you are over-paid, you'll get no sympathy from me. You're paid to do a job, not to warm a chair. If you keep your skills current, you should have no trouble getting paid well. If you stop learning new skills, you shouldn't expect to get paid any better than a college student.
Nothing better than seeing a father of 2 at age 45 out of work, hey, no skin off your nose.
Why is he out of work? Can he do the same job as a college grad? Then he should be able to get the same pay as a college grad. And probably more, since he's got 20 years of experience. If he got fired because he hasn't kept his skills current and is relying on his seniority to keep him in a job, then I have little sympathy. I'm 20. If I can do the same job as you, I expect to be paid the same as you, regardless of how long you've been warming a chair. If you are more qualified than me, then you should (and will) be paid more.
Second, everyone should look after their best interests without infringing on the rights of others. Companies are importing these people as SLAVE LABOR. They noticed that they can press them into situations that violate US labor laws out of fear of deportation. This should not be tollerated.
There's a simple solution: loosen up immigration accross the board. Then immigrants who get mistreated can go elsewhere with their skills. I absolutely agree that H1-B visas are imperfect, but they're better than nothing.
To say that we can't expand H1-B visas because that would be bad for the immigrants getting them is nonsense. If they are willing to undergo abuse to stay in the country, that says something about the situation they're escaping. We should absolutely do things to prevent that kind of abuse (and I think open borders is the best solution) but in the meantime it's paternalistic to keep potential workers out "for their own good."
The last thing the IT industry needs is a union.
Unions are simply cartels. They drive up wages and benefits by restricting supply. This is great if you are one of the ones who get the jobs. It sucks, though, if you are one of those "cheap foreign" workers who is excluded.
It always amazes me that people act as though the interests of the foreign workers is irrelevant. It's all about me, me, me. We have it pretty damn good here. So what if foreign workers will drive down our wages a bit? It's drive up their wages a *lot.* That's why they're willing to come over here. More to the point, it'll benefit the rest of society because prices for IT services will be cheaper.
Something to think about, someday you may not want to work a 70 hour week, you may have a family, you may grey hair or be balding, do you want to be replaced by an undercutting youngster or foreigner?
If you do useful work, your employer (unless he's stupid) will continue to keep you on. If you act as though what you learned in college is all you need to know, then you deserve to be fired. If you know your stuff, why would your employer want to fire you? You've got 10 years of experience, you're a proven worker, and they don't have to train you in like they would a new person.
If the reason is that you are paid to much, well, maybe you're over-paid. It works both ways-- the fact that you're older than me doesn't mean that you should automatically get the best jobs at the best wages. If I can do the same job as you, and I'm willing to do it for less money, why shouldn't I get the job? And why shouldn't you accept the wage I'm willing to take to keep yours?
I guess I'm confused as to what the issue is with older "balding" workers having it so tough. Why would an employer want to fire his most experienced employees for a kid? Salary? Skills? Those things are both in your control. If you're not willing to put in the time to keep your skills current, then perhaps you don't deserve a big raise every year. But to demand an advantage in the workplace simply on the basis of age is unfair to us and the industry as a whole.
And when it's your choice being limited and your wallet being hit, I'm sure you'll feel the same.
Who decides what counts as a "hit in the wallet," and by what standard? Every company charges as much as they can for their products. And every purchase is a "hit" to your wallet. At what point does a price go from fair profit to unfair "gouging?"
The People of the State of California must demonstrate that costs were higher than would normally be if there were competition.
How can they possibly know this? No one knows what's going to happen in the next 6 months in this industry. How could you possibly extrapolate these sorts of "what-if" scenarios several years into the past? And even if you could, what did you expect Microsoft to do? Even granting that they did some unethical things to their competitors, are they supposed to set their prices based on theoretical models of what prices "might have been?"
This isn't an easy thing to prove
That's a massive understatement. I'd make the much stronger statement that it's impossible to do so. No one can know what might have been. You can guess and make plausible arguments for your guess, but to expect Microsoft to be held responsible for the guesses of a bunch of economists is absurd.
The burden this sort of lawsuit would place on companies if it were taken seriously would be enourmous. Every company with a large market share would have to hire an economist to make economic models and figure out how much they are allowed to charge without getting sued. And like with antitrust itself, the rules would change every time they go before a new judge or a new administration.
The result is that most companies simply ignore antitrust law and pray that the DOJ doesn't decide to go after them. Trying to actually comply with such a vague and overreaching body of law would make it impossible for them to compete in the marketplace. Microsoft has rightly decided that it's more important to stay ahead in the marketplace and fight off legal challenges in court than to invest all their energies in complying with the whims of the DOJ.
Well, if you don't want governmental regulation overseeing markets and businesses in MINUTE DETAIL, then you are voting for the old order of private parties keeping each other in line by suing in court.
This depends on how the court system is arranged. In an ideal legal system, all the courts do is enforce property rights-- if you firebomb my house I take you to court for damages.
What we have here is something entirely different-- a transaction that both sides voluntarily agreed to in the past is being retroactively declared "unfair" and Microsoft is being made to pay for damages. My question is: even granting that they deserve punishment for antitrust violations (which I don't) how was Microsoft supposed to know what the "correct" price for it's products was? *Every* business charges as much as it can for its products. To expect Microsoft to suddenly say "oh, we're a monopoly now. We're not allowed to make a profit any more" is absurd.
The software business is an extremely high-risk business. You pour a lot of money into a product at the front end, gambling that you'll be able to recoup a lot of money in the long run. If you bet well, you make your money back and then some. If not, you lose money.
If companies are ethically or legally prevented from making "excessive" profits on successful products, why should they take big risks on products that might flop? And how is a company to know how much profit is "too much?"
In practice, these decisions are made by economists with wildly varying assumptions, and therefore come to wildly varying conclusions. There is no objective way to determine what price a product "should" cost.
So if prices become subject to lawsuits, then yes, you'll clog up courts. But those who believe that companies should be retroactively punished for setting their prices "too high" have only themselves to blame for this congestion. If monopolistic behavior justifies government intervention (and I think it seldom does) it should be applied to future behavior and should lay out clear rules. I shouldn't try to second-guess past pricing decisions that are intrinsicly fuzzy and impossible to quantify perfectly.
I suggest everyone go out and get Mac OS X. The graphics model will be resolution-independent and vector-based. In principle this means that you'll be able to switch to any resolution you want, and the OS will use those extra pixels to make everything look extra pretty.
While this is true, it's not the only consideration. You can also do altivec optimization at the OS level. From what I've read, many of the beautiful (and probably annoying) animations in OS X are much, much faster on a G4, probably owing to AltiVec. My guess is Apple is busy optimizing the low-level graphics routines to take advantage of AltiVec, and so all apps will get a speed boost when on a G4 Mac since much of an apps time is spent on graphics anyway.
As for whether AltiVec was a bad decision, I'm not an expert on the subject but the impression I've gotten is more that Moto is incompetent than that AltiVec fundamentally limits clock speeds. There are rumors that IBM could produce faster G4's if they wanted to but their contracts with Moto prevents them from doing so without Moto's permission. This is touched on briefly in the article. If this rumor is true, it my represent a problem of petty bickering rather than a technological failing of AltiVec.
"Corporatism" is a straw man. Throughout history, those with power and influence have conspired to profit at the expense of others. In feudal times, this was done by monarchies. In communist nations, Communist Party members use their influence to oppress the rest of society.
Today in the US, the rich and powerful make pilgrimages to Washington (or hire lobbyists) to get special favors from Washington. The clash of special interests permeates every aspect of government and every policy it enacts. Corporations battle it out over access to telecom, antitrust law, more military handouts, environmental regulations, subsidies, tax credits, regulations to restrict competitors, etc.
Jon Katz conflates this clash of interest groups with the market. He is wrong. Indeed, the corporate state we have today is the antithesis of a true free market-- one in which no one gets special favors from the government.
Indeed, this clash of interest groups is a fundamental feature of "economic democracy." People don't suddenly become un-selfish when they get into government, they simply pursue their self-interest by more direct means, means that tend to be far more destructive than those pursued in the private sector. In the marketplace, you must convince millions of consumers to use your product rather than that of your competitors. In Washington, you can simply get a subsidy or pass a law that outlaws your competition.
The difference between the free market and democracy is not that one promotes selfishness and the other promotes the public good. On the contrary, the difference is that under the free market shields individuals from this kind of political pressure, while "democratic" economic systems give corporations a direct and easy way to benefit themselves at the expense of others.
The problem with our educational system is that it *is* outside the marketplace. Rather than being independent private organizations accountable to their students and donors, most schools recieve their funding from the government, and as such are more susceptible from corporate pressure. The clash of interests groups we see on college campuses is not because there is too much commercialism on campus. On the contrary, college campuses are divisive and slavishly serve corporate interests precisely because they are government institutions and as such are more susceptible to pressure from the powerful.
A truly private system would probably still serve some corporate interests, but they would at least demand a fair payment in return. And colleges that produced faulty research because of corporate pressure would find itself losing students and donors due to the bad PR, and would be forced to shape up or go out of business. No comparable mechanism exists in a government-run system. Schools are guarunteed their money, and so they have no incentive to preserve the integrity of their research or their independence from corporate donors.
Libertarianism champions the "free enterprise" model which mostly panders to the greed, ignorance and fear of the general public.
Could you please elaborate? I'm really curious why you consider free markets to pander to ignorance and fear. Indeed, I think the precise opposite is true: governments tend to justify further interventions using fear and ignorance. Markets and prices are extremely efficient at producing and transmitting information from producers and consumers, while government tend to operate by obfuscating costs and benefits.
The libertarian wants to be unhindered in his activity to participate in market forces. This seems antithetical and inconsistant with theOpen Source method to me.
Again, not true at all. The hallmarks of free enterprise are competition and ruthless meritocracy. The good gets promoted, and the medocre and bad are weeded out. This seems to me an apt description of Open Source, which tends to rapidly adopt and propogate those code changes that work best.
Free markets are also characterized by a radical decentralization of economic decisions, just as Open Source is a radical decentralization of coding decisions.
The other posters answered this pretty well: the Mac has a lot more users that Linux/*BSD and they're more willing to pay money. But there's another reason as well: *nix is not a consumer platform.
I'm a CS major, and it still took me a weekend to get Linux working on my Mac, and another to get it to use the network properly. Granted, I'm a relative newby at this sort of thing, but if takes me two weekends, then 90% of computer users aren't going to be willing to use it at all.
Perhaps PC distros are better, but you still have to drop into a shell once in a while. When Red Hat comes out with a distro that allows a one-click install, and which has simple graphical configuration tools for all elements of the system, then it'll have some chance of capturing the broader consumer market. Even then, someone will have to unify the numerous window managers, graphical toolkits, and other libraries so users don't have to compile them themselves. And someone will have to write and enforce a set of consistent UI guidelines so that different apps work the same and don't confuse users.
In short, someone would have to do for Linux what Apple is now doing for BSD.
Since Linux is a hobbyist platform dedicated to development by volunteers and insistent on open source for everything, I can't see this happening. The tedious gruntwork of creating a complete, consistent, elegant desktop as Apple is doing with OS X isn't something that very many volunteers are going to want to do. And even if Red Hat or someone pays someone to do that, there is still the issue of interface consistency. Many existing Liinux apps are interface nightmares by Mac/Windoze standards. In order to make a viable consumer release many of these will have to be majorly re-written to conform to a common standard. Again, I can't see this happening.
So Linux makes a great low-end server and a decent hobbyist OS. It's not about to eclipse either Mac OS or Windows as a consumer desktop OS, though. I honestly don't think the hackers who write Linux understand what consumers want in their computers, and until they do, they aren't going to attract many non-geek users.
So if I tell you to drink arsenic and assure you that there is no evidence that arsenic is bad for you, and you drink it, then I am in no way responsible for your death?
The industry hasn't claimed it's not bad for you since the seventies. It simply has claimed that the evidence is inconclusive. A better analogy is if I give you a bottle of arsenic with a big old warning label on it, and say nothing about its safety or lack thereof. If you drink it, you're stupid.
Regardless of what Big Tobacco has said, it's no secret that cigarettes are bad for you. One of the big reasons that Big Tobacco has refused to acknowledge the bad side effects in court out of fear of liability. But anyone who smokes today should have known for 30 years that they are bad for you.
As for the rest of it, you are saying that because you believe that oil is going to be scarce in a specific number of years, you want to force car manufacturers to adopt a new technology that you think will work better. My point is: how do you know it will be better? How do you know it will be more efficient? There is no imminent crisis. It doesn't take 50 years to retool a factory. And when oil actually does start to get scarce, alternatives will be produced due to market incentives, with no intervention needed. If, on the other hand, we find more oil and continue to have plenty for 100 years, your forcing us to use untested technology may force unneeded costs on society for no reason.
You are creating a crisis where none exists. If companies are slow in switching over their factories when the oil runs out, they will lose business to those who switch earlier. Therefore once a viable alternative is available and ready, no government interference will be necessary to implement it. The fact that no alternative has arisen in the market place is evidence that no cost-effective alternative exists. There is simply nothing that can beat the price/performance ratio of gas.
Very true. Assuming that the crack being sold does not contain undisclosed impurities and the user is fully aware of the health risks, I don't think the crack dealer should have any legal responsiblity for the result. To say otherwise is to say that individuals are not responsible for the substances they ingest into their bodies.
If I choose to shoot up, that's my choice. I wouldn't expect anyone else, including the person who (at my request) provided me with that substance.
This is not to say that I approve of drug use by any means. And I'm not saying that drug dealing is the most honorable profession. But there's a big difference between personal tastes and legality. Regardless of my personal feelings about selling crack, I don't think it's right for me to impose my personal feelings on others. As long as all customers are voluntary and fully informed, I think drug dealers should be allowed to do their jobs without harrassment.
But if high overall demand from lots of people buying SUVs drives up prices, the people with efficient little cars have to pay more too, even though they contributed very little to the high demand.
I don't understand your point here. The SUV owners are paying through the nose to drive big cars. They are paying for their share of oil. Buying more of *anything* will drive up its price. That doesn't mean that the people who are paying more aren't paying their fair share.
The people who buy efficient cars are still making demands on a scarce resource-- oil. They should pay as high a per-gallon price as anyone else. The people who consume more gas pay more money for it, as they should. But I see no reason why they should pay a higher per-gallon rate for it. Causing higher prices isn't a legitimate externality unless you think people have a right to buy goods at a particular price.