Why do we need states? Why do we need fifty separate miniature countries, each with its own tax system?
Because if we had one central government collecting the money, and then distributing it, it would go to whoever happened to be in favor with the powers in office right now -- just the way the federal money is currently distributed.
The Democrats, if they want to survive as a viable party, desperately need a way that they can talk to somebody who's currently making $50,000 a year (and hopes to be making over $100,000 within the next five)...
Here's where the Republicans have you fooled. If they have their way, anyone making $50k a year will be making $40k within the next five. Remember, they are the party of capital, not labor. Your $50k salary is something to be controlled, not increased.
George Bush and his cohorts are pushing a policy of wage deflation. They are allowing corporations to gain tremendous amounts of power. They allow industries to set huge barriers of entry which means less competition. And they are setting up an economy where, yes, a few people will double their salaries from $50k to $100k, but the majority will remain stagnant or lose ground.
Plan on working longer hours for less money in the future under a Republican economy. Picture this: you have to do whatever it takes to keep your job because you are under water on your house since the housing bubble burst, and corporate consolidation has slashed the regional demand for your profession. Sure, you could land another job, but you'll have to move across the country to find it -- taking a $100k loss on your house.
The Republicans have you believing that you, with a dollar and a dream, can strike it rich. They have you hooked. You actually believe that if you just work hard enough, you'll double your salary in five years. Trust me, it's not that easy, especially in a lousy economy.
Ask a Republican if they believe in the concept of a meritocracy and they will tell you "absolutely!" Then ask them why they think it's important that we eliminate the estate tax so that a few wealthy people can set their kids up for life without them standing on their own merit and they'll say "uhh...".
It is hardly a meritocracy when the position you start out in life largely determines the position you will end up in. Social mobility is dying more every day. If your parents didn't make enough money to send you to the right schools, then your destiny probably involves the line "may I help you...?"
So do you still think you're going to hit that $100k, or will your entire industry be farmed overseas (Chinese autoworkers: $1.50/day, and no one over 30 need apply) and you'll have to start from square one?
That is the George Bush vision. More for the top, and tell people that this is good because it makes them hungrier, and hungry people work harder.
Online newspapers aren't that portable. I can take a print paper and read it at breakfast, at lunch at the mall, at dinner, I can read it in the bathroom, I can even read it in the car while sitting in traffic, or while waiting for a doctor/dentist, while waiting to get my car inspected, etc.
I can't do that with an online paper. My only options are reading it during the day at work (subsidized by my employer) or reading it at home on my PC in that room (subsidized by less time with my family).
Until electronic newspapers become vastly more portable (and I'm not talking about a tablet PC -- try taking one of those into a bathroom stall) there will still be a place for print papers.
It's not really the same, because in the example of the "configurable" game, it is being designed that way specifically to exploit a perceived loophole in the law, while something as generic as a compiler, which could be used to infringe, isn't designed for that specific purpose.
I saw an article in today's Boston Globe about someone who runs a website exposing informants. Anyone can go there and post information about who they feel narc'ed on them.
FBI gang infiltraitors are posted there. They are being exposed to the criminals because of this. Innocent people are being posted there, and are subject to harrassment and even violence.
The site founder's position is "I'm not doing the posting, and we strongly discourage retaliation against anyone (wink, wink), and we can do this because we have free speech". He created the site because someone turned him in for dealing drugs (which he was doing).
That said, such a site is HORRIBLE, because it puts a lot of power into the hands of criminals. Imagine being afraid to testify against a criminal because the criminals will post your information somewhere and the odds are you're going to die.
Well, a game that is configurable is similar -- although the threat of death is certainly not there. Sure, it might be legal to set up a game so that the user could turn it into Scrabble, but that game would greatly facilitate people to break the law. In fact, you and I both know that such an attempt would merely be an end-run around valid trademark laws.
It's essentially the "Napster" defense -- "my tool doesn't break any laws, and I can't help it if the people use it to break the law".
So why do it and ruin things like that. Next thing you know the true hero, the little guy that creates a wildly popular online game called "Babble" is going to have the same crap pulled on him by UltraMultiNationalCorp, Inc. Goliath will use the same weapons against David.
Funny, it would seem that the end-game in such an arms race would certainly not be an ad-free internet. It would be a content-free internet. Take away ad money that is already there, and a lot of people are going to say "hmm, I used to get $x for updating my website, now I get $0. I think I'll go outside for a walk today instead of writing".
The internet used to be a lot more interesting during the boom years; now that there is less money there are less interesting and informative sites.
I agree that any sane person in a life-or-death situation would place their bet on a woman to intepret literature and would place their bet on a man to rescue them from a building.
If the situation wasn't life-or-death, pick immediately, I'd prefer to look at the resume for the literature test, and I'd prefer to see some bench-press results from the firefighter test before I made my decision.
That is a far cry, however, from everyday life, where lazy people everyday use race or gender as a way to cut corners when making decisions. They classify people visually as a way to avoid having to take the trouble to do the homework on the people they interact with every day. They use that classification when there isn't enough time to do the legwork but the situation isn't life or death.
Cops pull over black drivers because they are "more likely" to have committed a crime. People don't hire Hispanics because they are "more likely" to steal. Women aren't promoted because they are "more likely" to leave the company to have a baby.
The end result is a society where people are pigeonholed into certain roles based on a potentially negligible difference between groups. As I said in an earlier post, if whites use drugs at a 2% rate and Blacks use them at a 6% rate, does that justify not hiring any Blacks because a Black employee is three times more likely to be on drugs?
That's how risk-averse people think. And people are largely risk-averse.
I don't think I'd like to live in that world, because sooner or later I'm going to have a barrier put in front of me.
What is the benefit of studying and gathering such information?
Don't you think that most of the people who draw up statistics showing that, for example, 2/3 of all immigrants are on welfare (I'm making that up) are doing so to misuse the information to make generalist statements or justify policies about immigrants or welfare?
What benefit comes from saying that "women are worse at spacial orientation tasks"? What could you do with that information other than use it to either justify less women working in an industry that involves spacial reasoning (or to justify lower pay)?
The basic problem with this information is that most people will misapply it. They will take your generalist and possibly truthful statements (I didn't double-check them, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) to mean that all men are better at 3d spatial orientation tasks than all men.
Then they will use this information to treat any given man differently from any given woman.
So I guess I'm saying that there isn't particularly a problem with identifying such differences, the problem is in the fact that most people draw harmful wrong conclusions from this type of report.
Unfortunately, most people are too lazy to understand the difference between descriptive characteristics and predictive characteristics. And a large percentage of people will even attempt to justify the usage of such information for their own not-so-noble means (for example, if 5% of the white population has taken drugs, but 10% of the black population has taken drugs, they will say it makes sense to only hire white people because blacks are twice as likely to be on drugs!)
The black is the better athlete, and he practices to be the better athlete, and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes way back to the slave period. The slave owner would breed this big black with this big black woman so he could have a big black kid. That's where it all started.
He was fired for that ignorant comment.
The problem is that such generalizations sound very plausible on a common sense level, but they are never backed up with scientific fact. They are essentially hypotheses designed to prove a certain situation, one that typically involves treating someone of a certain group differently (often less favorably).
I could make the comment that "Men are more aggressive in discipling their children because in the wild, when hunting, if they weren't their child would likely die.".
Sounds plausible, right? And what's the harm in people holding that philosophy?
Now how would you like it when a woman judge has this in her head when deciding to award custody of your children? Or when you're appearing before an all-female hiring panel to be a child care provider. Would you like it if the "genetically more likely to have abusive" is running through everyone's heads?
Yes and no. The difficulty in person-based surveillance made it impractical to track all non-suspects. The ease of GPS makes it almost trivial.
Imagine a community where all vehicles are secretly tagged with GPS. Then the police round up everyone who drove through a certain neighborhood known for drug activity, grill them for a while, starts files on them, etc.
And let's say they do this to you EVERY time you drive through that area -- you're a suspect for merely being someplace. Then they claim that they have probable cause for searching your personal property, since you drove through the drug area. And let's say they do this a LOT. Let's say they start asking questions about you at work, will your employer still consider you for employee of the quarter with the cops sniffing around?
Is that what this country was founded on? Doesn't that sound an awful lot like an eastern bloc dictatorship?
Seems outlandish? Well, in Truro MA they are collecting DNA samples from every male in town to try and solve a murder. Don't feel like giving one up? Well, that makes you a suspect, since your DNA hasn't cleared you.
Exactly! The wages paid to people in those countries will eventually fuel demand for our goods. Just like when we moved all our textile and manufacturing jobs to China 30 years ago.
Oh, wait a minute. Their wages are still low, and they don't import all that much from us. I guess we just have to wait another 50-100 years, it will trickle down sooner or later. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
Read the stories about Quabbin Reservoir, built in Massachusetts in the early 20th century.
The state started floating plans to build a massive reservoir in the middle of the state, essentially taking and submerging three small but thriving towns. But the stories were floated many years before the land was taken.
Since no one would buy land there due to the threat of having land taken, the towns shriveled, and the state stepped in and paid pennies on the dollar for the land because it was now worthless.
Speaking only for myself, I much prefer my $45 / hr coding job to the $20 / hr I could have made had Goodyear not moved those prized tire manufacturing jobs from my hometown (Akron, Ohio).
There are two problems with that. First, we didn't create enough "coding jobs" for all the people who were displaced from the other industries that we shipped overseas, and second, you make the presumption that every factory worker is capable of coding. They are not.
The blacksmiths said the same thing... Guess what, we automated their jobs and later offshored them, do you honestly believe we would be better off with the old way?
You're making a grave mistake. You're using the advantages of automation to justify offshoring. They are two very different things.
Automation is pure innovation. Automation occurs gradually, as a series of small steps. People can react to it. And many people in an industry still have a chance of competing when their job gets automated, because their industry knowledge is useful in the new automated world. And innovation plainly occurs when automation takes place.
Offshoring does not create anything new. It creates no innovation. I would say that offshoring inhibits innovation. There is no longer the pressure to lower costs to stimulate innovation. Simply simply moving the work to a cheaper workforce relieves that pressure.
I also believe that the entire country would be better off if there was a range of jobs across all skill sets that paid well enough to live. My grandfather was able to earn a good enough living in a factory to build a house and to send his kids to college without a high school degree (which he couldn't get because his parents were farmers). No such jobs exist today. The leaders of this country need to realize that their economic system is designed to doom a large percentage of people to poverty and hopelessness. When that has happened other countries, revolutions occur.
Comparative Advantage has shown itself to be true over and over for nearly 200 years
Comparative advantage was theorized in an era where there was not instant mobility of capital. And comparative advantage has a caveat; the trade is supposed to be mutually beneficial. The trade that is being practiced is largely only beneficial to a small group of people controlling it. I'm still paying $80 for shoes that are now made in China, the same as I used to pay when they were made in Maine. But I'm now paying more taxes to support the laid-off shoemakers in Maine too. I don't see how I'm winning there.
Comparative advantage has this nasty little habit of destroying people and places. One only has to look within the US to see the damage it has done - when manufacturing moved from the Northeast to the South, the Northeast was left with poverty that it has not yet helped to this day.
Comparative advantage is more about cost avoidance than it is about lower costs. Comparative advantage lets companies escape the repercussions of their activities. They couldn't avoid them entirely when the escape was merely within the US - the federal government ensured that. But with no world government, corporations are free to do as they please, pitting groups of people against each other with no referee. No wonder companies are rushing to the global playing field.
This country has been declining ever since it has become easy to move goods across the world relatively easily. While this has made everyone's standard of living rise, it has also increased the gap between the poor and the rich. And as it becomes easier to move capital and goods to the lowest bidder, our way of life gets worse and worse, except for the small group of people controlling the flow.
I haven't exactly seen the demand for US goods increase in countries that have been doing work for the US for dozens of years. Just how long should we sit back and wait for the "benefits" of unfettered trade to materialize? We have waited so long that this is
As it stands now, we're not offshoring innovation, we're sending the scut work abroad, just like we've done with manufacturing.
Ah, you've bought into the talking point.
Our manufacturing was onced prized. Then it became "dirty factory work that no one wanted to do" and it was sent offshore.
Call centers were hailed as a great service job in the new service economy. But then the jobs were described as dead-end, and were sent offshore.
Computer programmers (a.k.a. computer engineers) were seen as the wave of the future. But then the jobs became "coding", it was called "scut work", and it was sent offshore.
Our accountants, bookkeepers, analysts were all jobs that kids aspired to be. But now they are called "backoffice" -- kind of like "back of the bus", and they are being sent offshore.
Now even radiologists -- full blown doctors -- are having their work outsourced. And every time I see the job described, it is described as "reading film". Sounds like lousy work, we better get rid of it.
Can't you see the pattern? Denigrate the job and no one weeps when it gets sent overseas.
Do you see much in the way of manufacturing design? Of course not. You need to know how to manufacture to be able to design something.
Likewise, once the "coding" jobs are all overseas, the design work will soon follow. After all, people who are most able to design something are those that know how to build it.
Keep living the lie that your "innovation job" is safe, if it lets you sleep at night. Because that takes an arrogant position that Americans are somehow genetically superior to our lower-paid bretheren in the third world. I've got news for you -- you're sadly mistaken.
The point is that if I want to attach a device to my television that translates every third word into Algonquin once the signal comes into my device it's none of their business.
This brings up an interesting legal point; would a company legally be able to design a TV set that replaced network commercials with its own commercials? It could conceivably give the TV sets away because it would make serious money on advertising.
And could it use your very same argument that the user is choosing to replace the network ads with the alternative commercials?
It seems that globalization is an attempt by business to advance this very same ball, making it harder and harder for the little guy to compete. The barriers of entry are raised so high that the leaders can do what they want without fear.
100 years ago anyone could set up a local shop doing just about anything. Local industry thrived. Now, can you start a grocery store? How about a department store? No way -- you'll be killed by the big boys within months.
Most industries are considered "mature", as you say. Mature is another word for "no one can enter".
Take "cheap Asian labor" as an example. Imagine if you or I could come up with an idea, then farm it out to China and have it made for pennies? We could compete with the big boys.
But it doesn't work that way. There are laws, there is a lot of structure, things that big companies can navigate through but which stop little guys at the gate.
By right, you or I should be able to benefit from "outsourcing" and "globalization". But reality is, those things have made it harder for you or I to enter the marketplace.
Really, really poor taste? Yep. Probably a fucking stupid thing to say when you're CEO of a company that makes electronic voting machines?
I'd go farther than that. I'd say that having made such a comment should either make Diebold ineligible for the election, or should make him lose his job. That's the kind of thing you don't joke about when you're in a position of power.
It would be like the Supreme Court justices joking that they would make sure that Bush got elected before rendering their 2000 decision.
So this is what the future holds - American wages fall a little, Indian wages rise a LOT.
This would be fine if it was true for all workers (although people would call it deflation and it would probably be bad for other reasons). The problem is that there are still many industries -- and therefore goods and services -- which are priced as high as ever.
Healthcare is an ideal example. If most of the people in the US could afford to pay their medical bills, everything would be fine. But as you send more jobs overseas and replace them with wages that are minimal, now many people can't afford health care.
Housing is another one. Same situation, a job for an unskilled worker 80 years ago let that worker afford a modest house. Now that worker is on government assistance, living in subsidized housing.
The IT industry might be just a small chunk of the US economy, but outsourcing, which has been going on for years, is raising the standard of living for some US citizens while lowering it for many others. Taken to the extreme, all jobs should be outsourced, and then no one would be left to buy any goods or services, and no one would be left to innovate either (because innovation comes from the ground up). That isn't good for this country in the long run.
I think the fact that it is Canada DOES make a difference because it allows us to compete more evenly.
No one is saying that the work in India is better than what is being done here. The primary reason it is being done is that the cost of labor in India is 1/10 of the cost of labor in the USA. We can innovate all we want, but we're not going to save 90% of our costs (and if we do come up with such an innovation, it will be used in India next week to cut their costs by 90%!).
The problem is magnified in that by sending those dollars to India, since their wage scale is so much lower than ours, it is very unlikely that they will be buying goods made here. They just can't afford it.
In contrast, if Canada is at 90% the wages of the US, that allows us to compete better. Some competition is good, but when your competitor brings a nuclear bomb to a knife fight, that's no competition.
And money spent in Canada is far more likely to be re-spent in the USA. Canada is closer, we trade more with them, and they can afford our goods.
Remember, a dollar spent locally is more likely to stay local than one spent halfway across the globe to a trading partner that is only taking your dollars, not sending them back.
The other key thing to remember is that is a lot easier for the average US citizen to trade with Canada. The cultures are similar, the languages are similar. It is FAR more likely that trading with India will be done by large multinational corporations. That's no accident. They want it that way -- it limits their competition.
And that's the danger of globalization -- it gives corporations much, much, much more power than they had in the past. There is no global government to monitor them, there is no way for workers to exercise leverage on them via unions, they can just run roughshod over us in the race to the bottom.
IP laws such as copyright or patents give "ingenuity" a tangible value. Otherwise you'd have to use your "ingenuity" all the time to earn your money. Without such laws, any "great idea" you have can be used by anyone else. That doesn't give it much value, does it?
Assuming that your company isn't based on a protected "great idea", then unless you are the one solely responsible for its success (which seems unlikely due to the fact that someone will buy the company), then that means the company can run perfectly well without you. So why should you get the millions when you're not doing the work?
So I don't understand where the entitlement of "millions of dollars" comes from. People aren't going to buy your "hard work" or "intelligence" because it's not worth anything to them once you're gone. And if your "ingenuity" isn't protected by IP laws, then others can duplicate this.
So why again should you be paid "many millions"?
You're making the flawed assumption that capital is more valuable than labor. Without labor, capital is worthless. At the very least, capital and labor should benefit equally from the success derived from their combination.
I don't agree. In a close race, every vote would matter, far more than they matter now.
We are just as much in the opposite direction now. I live in Massachusetts. Strongly Democratic. My vote doesn't count, because it won't swing the electoral votes away from John Kerry (I'm still undecided, BTW). Many people here figure "why vote, there's no way it can matter".
With instantaneous communication and polling, the presidential run has focuses on a handful of states. No one else matters, because the outcome is predetermined.
Do you think that the founding fathers intended "swing states" to be the only ones that mattered?
Also, keep in mind that the electoral college was developed when opinions of different states mattered much more than they do now. Today, a Democrat in MA and one in Ohio have more in common than a Democrat and a Republican both from MA.
It doesn't matter that there are tens of millions of people in New York and California. Their votes would have the same amount of weight as voters in Rhode Island and New Hampshire.
If I sell my company and earn many millions of dollars due to my ingenuity, skill, hard work, and intelligence, I no longer have to work. Yet I earned the money fair-and-square. I am no longer a "working person," does that mean the Green Party is now against me?
Don't forget to add "... and due to laws that are favorable to me being able to do this" to your laundry list.
If you can sell your company to someone else, that means someone else can do what you did. And that, to me, means your "worth" isn't as much as you think it is. In other words, you're easily replaceable. You're not unique. You're not special.
You may have figured out how to do something differently before others, but you rely on a set of laws that prevent others from doing the same exact thing as you (stifling competition).
So your success is not simply due to your "ingenuity, skill, hard work, and intelligence". It is also due to "an economic system that allows me to stop my competitors".
The result of that is "extra" that money is taken from consumers and given to you. Not exactly pure capitalism, is it?
If you are proposing what I think you're proposing -- which is that the government should NOT make up for inequities in ability to fund across communities -- then how would you propose an aging urban center with a negligible tax base and little money educate its children?
Tax breaks to residents won't help, because most of the people in the city are at such low levels of income that they aren't paying a lot in taxes to begin with.
Are you going to use the magical "jobs will appear and everyone will live happily ever after" argument?
What will you do when this large group of uneducated people -- unable to get a job in the global economy -- comes marching on your gated community with torches and clubs, because they have absolutely no hope in life since they couldn't afford to get educated?
Slashdot Mirror
Why do we need states? Why do we need fifty separate miniature countries, each with its own tax system?
Because if we had one central government collecting the money, and then distributing it, it would go to whoever happened to be in favor with the powers in office right now -- just the way the federal money is currently distributed.
The Democrats, if they want to survive as a viable party, desperately need a way that they can talk to somebody who's currently making $50,000 a year (and hopes to be making over $100,000 within the next five)...
Here's where the Republicans have you fooled. If they have their way, anyone making $50k a year will be making $40k within the next five. Remember, they are the party of capital, not labor. Your $50k salary is something to be controlled, not increased.
George Bush and his cohorts are pushing a policy of wage deflation. They are allowing corporations to gain tremendous amounts of power. They allow industries to set huge barriers of entry which means less competition. And they are setting up an economy where, yes, a few people will double their salaries from $50k to $100k, but the majority will remain stagnant or lose ground.
Plan on working longer hours for less money in the future under a Republican economy. Picture this: you have to do whatever it takes to keep your job because you are under water on your house since the housing bubble burst, and corporate consolidation has slashed the regional demand for your profession. Sure, you could land another job, but you'll have to move across the country to find it -- taking a $100k loss on your house.
The Republicans have you believing that you, with a dollar and a dream, can strike it rich. They have you hooked. You actually believe that if you just work hard enough, you'll double your salary in five years. Trust me, it's not that easy, especially in a lousy economy.
Ask a Republican if they believe in the concept of a meritocracy and they will tell you "absolutely!" Then ask them why they think it's important that we eliminate the estate tax so that a few wealthy people can set their kids up for life without them standing on their own merit and they'll say "uhh...".
It is hardly a meritocracy when the position you start out in life largely determines the position you will end up in. Social mobility is dying more every day. If your parents didn't make enough money to send you to the right schools, then your destiny probably involves the line "may I help you...?"
So do you still think you're going to hit that $100k, or will your entire industry be farmed overseas (Chinese autoworkers: $1.50/day, and no one over 30 need apply) and you'll have to start from square one?
That is the George Bush vision. More for the top, and tell people that this is good because it makes them hungrier, and hungry people work harder.
Online newspapers aren't that portable. I can take a print paper and read it at breakfast, at lunch at the mall, at dinner, I can read it in the bathroom, I can even read it in the car while sitting in traffic, or while waiting for a doctor/dentist, while waiting to get my car inspected, etc.
I can't do that with an online paper. My only options are reading it during the day at work (subsidized by my employer) or reading it at home on my PC in that room (subsidized by less time with my family).
Until electronic newspapers become vastly more portable (and I'm not talking about a tablet PC -- try taking one of those into a bathroom stall) there will still be a place for print papers.
It's not really the same, because in the example of the "configurable" game, it is being designed that way specifically to exploit a perceived loophole in the law, while something as generic as a compiler, which could be used to infringe, isn't designed for that specific purpose.
Interesting concept, but it's a Pandora's box.
This may seem off-topic, but bear with me.
I saw an article in today's Boston Globe about someone who runs a website exposing informants. Anyone can go there and post information about who they feel narc'ed on them.
FBI gang infiltraitors are posted there. They are being exposed to the criminals because of this. Innocent people are being posted there, and are subject to harrassment and even violence.
The site founder's position is "I'm not doing the posting, and we strongly discourage retaliation against anyone (wink, wink), and we can do this because we have free speech". He created the site because someone turned him in for dealing drugs (which he was doing).
That said, such a site is HORRIBLE, because it puts a lot of power into the hands of criminals. Imagine being afraid to testify against a criminal because the criminals will post your information somewhere and the odds are you're going to die.
Well, a game that is configurable is similar -- although the threat of death is certainly not there. Sure, it might be legal to set up a game so that the user could turn it into Scrabble, but that game would greatly facilitate people to break the law. In fact, you and I both know that such an attempt would merely be an end-run around valid trademark laws.
It's essentially the "Napster" defense -- "my tool doesn't break any laws, and I can't help it if the people use it to break the law".
So why do it and ruin things like that. Next thing you know the true hero, the little guy that creates a wildly popular online game called "Babble" is going to have the same crap pulled on him by UltraMultiNationalCorp, Inc. Goliath will use the same weapons against David.
So why open that door?
Funny, it would seem that the end-game in such an arms race would certainly not be an ad-free internet. It would be a content-free internet. Take away ad money that is already there, and a lot of people are going to say "hmm, I used to get $x for updating my website, now I get $0. I think I'll go outside for a walk today instead of writing".
The internet used to be a lot more interesting during the boom years; now that there is less money there are less interesting and informative sites.
I agree that any sane person in a life-or-death situation would place their bet on a woman to intepret literature and would place their bet on a man to rescue them from a building.
If the situation wasn't life-or-death, pick immediately, I'd prefer to look at the resume for the literature test, and I'd prefer to see some bench-press results from the firefighter test before I made my decision.
That is a far cry, however, from everyday life, where lazy people everyday use race or gender as a way to cut corners when making decisions. They classify people visually as a way to avoid having to take the trouble to do the homework on the people they interact with every day. They use that classification when there isn't enough time to do the legwork but the situation isn't life or death.
Cops pull over black drivers because they are "more likely" to have committed a crime. People don't hire Hispanics because they are "more likely" to steal. Women aren't promoted because they are "more likely" to leave the company to have a baby.
The end result is a society where people are pigeonholed into certain roles based on a potentially negligible difference between groups. As I said in an earlier post, if whites use drugs at a 2% rate and Blacks use them at a 6% rate, does that justify not hiring any Blacks because a Black employee is three times more likely to be on drugs?
That's how risk-averse people think. And people are largely risk-averse.
I don't think I'd like to live in that world, because sooner or later I'm going to have a barrier put in front of me.
What is the benefit of studying and gathering such information?
Don't you think that most of the people who draw up statistics showing that, for example, 2/3 of all immigrants are on welfare (I'm making that up) are doing so to misuse the information to make generalist statements or justify policies about immigrants or welfare?
What benefit comes from saying that "women are worse at spacial orientation tasks"? What could you do with that information other than use it to either justify less women working in an industry that involves spacial reasoning (or to justify lower pay)?
The basic problem with this information is that most people will misapply it. They will take your generalist and possibly truthful statements (I didn't double-check them, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) to mean that all men are better at 3d spatial orientation tasks than all men.
Then they will use this information to treat any given man differently from any given woman.
So I guess I'm saying that there isn't particularly a problem with identifying such differences, the problem is in the fact that most people draw harmful wrong conclusions from this type of report.
Unfortunately, most people are too lazy to understand the difference between descriptive characteristics and predictive characteristics. And a large percentage of people will even attempt to justify the usage of such information for their own not-so-noble means (for example, if 5% of the white population has taken drugs, but 10% of the black population has taken drugs, they will say it makes sense to only hire white people because blacks are twice as likely to be on drugs!)
Jimmy the Greek made similar comments:
The black is the better athlete, and he practices to be the better athlete, and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes way back to the slave period. The slave owner would breed this big black with this big black woman so he could have a big black kid. That's where it all started.
He was fired for that ignorant comment.
The problem is that such generalizations sound very plausible on a common sense level, but they are never backed up with scientific fact. They are essentially hypotheses designed to prove a certain situation, one that typically involves treating someone of a certain group differently (often less favorably).
I could make the comment that "Men are more aggressive in discipling their children because in the wild, when hunting, if they weren't their child would likely die.".
Sounds plausible, right? And what's the harm in people holding that philosophy?
Now how would you like it when a woman judge has this in her head when deciding to award custody of your children? Or when you're appearing before an all-female hiring panel to be a child care provider. Would you like it if the "genetically more likely to have abusive" is running through everyone's heads?
Yes and no. The difficulty in person-based surveillance made it impractical to track all non-suspects. The ease of GPS makes it almost trivial.
Imagine a community where all vehicles are secretly tagged with GPS. Then the police round up everyone who drove through a certain neighborhood known for drug activity, grill them for a while, starts files on them, etc.
And let's say they do this to you EVERY time you drive through that area -- you're a suspect for merely being someplace. Then they claim that they have probable cause for searching your personal property, since you drove through the drug area. And let's say they do this a LOT. Let's say they start asking questions about you at work, will your employer still consider you for employee of the quarter with the cops sniffing around?
Is that what this country was founded on? Doesn't that sound an awful lot like an eastern bloc dictatorship?
Seems outlandish? Well, in Truro MA they are collecting DNA samples from every male in town to try and solve a murder. Don't feel like giving one up? Well, that makes you a suspect, since your DNA hasn't cleared you.
Exactly! The wages paid to people in those countries will eventually fuel demand for our goods. Just like when we moved all our textile and manufacturing jobs to China 30 years ago.
Oh, wait a minute. Their wages are still low, and they don't import all that much from us. I guess we just have to wait another 50-100 years, it will trickle down sooner or later. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
Since a Martian year is 686.9726 earth days, it's actually just a little over 1/2 Mars year old.
Read the stories about Quabbin Reservoir, built in Massachusetts in the early 20th century.
The state started floating plans to build a massive reservoir in the middle of the state, essentially taking and submerging three small but thriving towns. But the stories were floated many years before the land was taken.
Since no one would buy land there due to the threat of having land taken, the towns shriveled, and the state stepped in and paid pennies on the dollar for the land because it was now worthless.
Speaking only for myself, I much prefer my $45 / hr coding job to the $20 / hr I could have made had Goodyear not moved those prized tire manufacturing jobs from my hometown (Akron, Ohio).
There are two problems with that. First, we didn't create enough "coding jobs" for all the people who were displaced from the other industries that we shipped overseas, and second, you make the presumption that every factory worker is capable of coding. They are not.
The blacksmiths said the same thing... Guess what, we automated their jobs and later offshored them, do you honestly believe we would be better off with the old way?
You're making a grave mistake. You're using the advantages of automation to justify offshoring. They are two very different things.
Automation is pure innovation. Automation occurs gradually, as a series of small steps. People can react to it. And many people in an industry still have a chance of competing when their job gets automated, because their industry knowledge is useful in the new automated world. And innovation plainly occurs when automation takes place.
Offshoring does not create anything new. It creates no innovation. I would say that offshoring inhibits innovation. There is no longer the pressure to lower costs to stimulate innovation. Simply simply moving the work to a cheaper workforce relieves that pressure.
I also believe that the entire country would be better off if there was a range of jobs across all skill sets that paid well enough to live. My grandfather was able to earn a good enough living in a factory to build a house and to send his kids to college without a high school degree (which he couldn't get because his parents were farmers). No such jobs exist today. The leaders of this country need to realize that their economic system is designed to doom a large percentage of people to poverty and hopelessness. When that has happened other countries, revolutions occur.
Comparative Advantage has shown itself to be true over and over for nearly 200 years
Comparative advantage was theorized in an era where there was not instant mobility of capital. And comparative advantage has a caveat; the trade is supposed to be mutually beneficial. The trade that is being practiced is largely only beneficial to a small group of people controlling it. I'm still paying $80 for shoes that are now made in China, the same as I used to pay when they were made in Maine. But I'm now paying more taxes to support the laid-off shoemakers in Maine too. I don't see how I'm winning there.
Comparative advantage has this nasty little habit of destroying people and places. One only has to look within the US to see the damage it has done - when manufacturing moved from the Northeast to the South, the Northeast was left with poverty that it has not yet helped to this day.
Comparative advantage is more about cost avoidance than it is about lower costs. Comparative advantage lets companies escape the repercussions of their activities. They couldn't avoid them entirely when the escape was merely within the US - the federal government ensured that. But with no world government, corporations are free to do as they please, pitting groups of people against each other with no referee. No wonder companies are rushing to the global playing field.
This country has been declining ever since it has become easy to move goods across the world relatively easily. While this has made everyone's standard of living rise, it has also increased the gap between the poor and the rich. And as it becomes easier to move capital and goods to the lowest bidder, our way of life gets worse and worse, except for the small group of people controlling the flow.
I haven't exactly seen the demand for US goods increase in countries that have been doing work for the US for dozens of years. Just how long should we sit back and wait for the "benefits" of unfettered trade to materialize? We have waited so long that this is
As it stands now, we're not offshoring innovation, we're sending the scut work abroad, just like we've done with manufacturing.
Ah, you've bought into the talking point.
Our manufacturing was onced prized. Then it became "dirty factory work that no one wanted to do" and it was sent offshore.
Call centers were hailed as a great service job in the new service economy. But then the jobs were described as dead-end, and were sent offshore.
Computer programmers (a.k.a. computer engineers) were seen as the wave of the future. But then the jobs became "coding", it was called "scut work", and it was sent offshore.
Our accountants, bookkeepers, analysts were all jobs that kids aspired to be. But now they are called "backoffice" -- kind of like "back of the bus", and they are being sent offshore.
Now even radiologists -- full blown doctors -- are having their work outsourced. And every time I see the job described, it is described as "reading film". Sounds like lousy work, we better get rid of it.
Can't you see the pattern? Denigrate the job and no one weeps when it gets sent overseas.
Do you see much in the way of manufacturing design? Of course not. You need to know how to manufacture to be able to design something.
Likewise, once the "coding" jobs are all overseas, the design work will soon follow. After all, people who are most able to design something are those that know how to build it.
Keep living the lie that your "innovation job" is safe, if it lets you sleep at night. Because that takes an arrogant position that Americans are somehow genetically superior to our lower-paid bretheren in the third world. I've got news for you -- you're sadly mistaken.
The point is that if I want to attach a device to my television that translates every third word into Algonquin once the signal comes into my device it's none of their business.
This brings up an interesting legal point; would a company legally be able to design a TV set that replaced network commercials with its own commercials? It could conceivably give the TV sets away because it would make serious money on advertising.
And could it use your very same argument that the user is choosing to replace the network ads with the alternative commercials?
But is this good thing?
It seems that globalization is an attempt by business to advance this very same ball, making it harder and harder for the little guy to compete. The barriers of entry are raised so high that the leaders can do what they want without fear.
100 years ago anyone could set up a local shop doing just about anything. Local industry thrived. Now, can you start a grocery store? How about a department store? No way -- you'll be killed by the big boys within months.
Most industries are considered "mature", as you say. Mature is another word for "no one can enter".
Take "cheap Asian labor" as an example. Imagine if you or I could come up with an idea, then farm it out to China and have it made for pennies? We could compete with the big boys.
But it doesn't work that way. There are laws, there is a lot of structure, things that big companies can navigate through but which stop little guys at the gate.
By right, you or I should be able to benefit from "outsourcing" and "globalization". But reality is, those things have made it harder for you or I to enter the marketplace.
Really, really poor taste? Yep. Probably a fucking stupid thing to say when you're CEO of a company that makes electronic voting machines?
I'd go farther than that. I'd say that having made such a comment should either make Diebold ineligible for the election, or should make him lose his job. That's the kind of thing you don't joke about when you're in a position of power.
It would be like the Supreme Court justices joking that they would make sure that Bush got elected before rendering their 2000 decision.
So this is what the future holds - American wages fall a little, Indian wages rise a LOT.
This would be fine if it was true for all workers (although people would call it deflation and it would probably be bad for other reasons). The problem is that there are still many industries -- and therefore goods and services -- which are priced as high as ever.
Healthcare is an ideal example. If most of the people in the US could afford to pay their medical bills, everything would be fine. But as you send more jobs overseas and replace them with wages that are minimal, now many people can't afford health care.
Housing is another one. Same situation, a job for an unskilled worker 80 years ago let that worker afford a modest house. Now that worker is on government assistance, living in subsidized housing.
The IT industry might be just a small chunk of the US economy, but outsourcing, which has been going on for years, is raising the standard of living for some US citizens while lowering it for many others. Taken to the extreme, all jobs should be outsourced, and then no one would be left to buy any goods or services, and no one would be left to innovate either (because innovation comes from the ground up). That isn't good for this country in the long run.
I think the fact that it is Canada DOES make a difference because it allows us to compete more evenly.
No one is saying that the work in India is better than what is being done here. The primary reason it is being done is that the cost of labor in India is 1/10 of the cost of labor in the USA. We can innovate all we want, but we're not going to save 90% of our costs (and if we do come up with such an innovation, it will be used in India next week to cut their costs by 90%!).
The problem is magnified in that by sending those dollars to India, since their wage scale is so much lower than ours, it is very unlikely that they will be buying goods made here. They just can't afford it.
In contrast, if Canada is at 90% the wages of the US, that allows us to compete better. Some competition is good, but when your competitor brings a nuclear bomb to a knife fight, that's no competition.
And money spent in Canada is far more likely to be re-spent in the USA. Canada is closer, we trade more with them, and they can afford our goods.
Remember, a dollar spent locally is more likely to stay local than one spent halfway across the globe to a trading partner that is only taking your dollars, not sending them back.
The other key thing to remember is that is a lot easier for the average US citizen to trade with Canada. The cultures are similar, the languages are similar. It is FAR more likely that trading with India will be done by large multinational corporations. That's no accident. They want it that way -- it limits their competition.
And that's the danger of globalization -- it gives corporations much, much, much more power than they had in the past. There is no global government to monitor them, there is no way for workers to exercise leverage on them via unions, they can just run roughshod over us in the race to the bottom.
IP laws such as copyright or patents give "ingenuity" a tangible value. Otherwise you'd have to use your "ingenuity" all the time to earn your money. Without such laws, any "great idea" you have can be used by anyone else. That doesn't give it much value, does it?
Assuming that your company isn't based on a protected "great idea", then unless you are the one solely responsible for its success (which seems unlikely due to the fact that someone will buy the company), then that means the company can run perfectly well without you. So why should you get the millions when you're not doing the work?
So I don't understand where the entitlement of "millions of dollars" comes from. People aren't going to buy your "hard work" or "intelligence" because it's not worth anything to them once you're gone. And if your "ingenuity" isn't protected by IP laws, then others can duplicate this.
So why again should you be paid "many millions"?
You're making the flawed assumption that capital is more valuable than labor. Without labor, capital is worthless. At the very least, capital and labor should benefit equally from the success derived from their combination.
Ralph
I don't agree. In a close race, every vote would matter, far more than they matter now.
We are just as much in the opposite direction now. I live in Massachusetts. Strongly Democratic. My vote doesn't count, because it won't swing the electoral votes away from John Kerry (I'm still undecided, BTW). Many people here figure "why vote, there's no way it can matter".
With instantaneous communication and polling, the presidential run has focuses on a handful of states. No one else matters, because the outcome is predetermined.
Do you think that the founding fathers intended "swing states" to be the only ones that mattered?
Also, keep in mind that the electoral college was developed when opinions of different states mattered much more than they do now. Today, a Democrat in MA and one in Ohio have more in common than a Democrat and a Republican both from MA.
It doesn't matter that there are tens of millions of people in New York and California. Their votes would have the same amount of weight as voters in Rhode Island and New Hampshire.
If I sell my company and earn many millions of dollars due to my ingenuity, skill, hard work, and intelligence, I no longer have to work. Yet I earned the money fair-and-square. I am no longer a "working person," does that mean the Green Party is now against me?
Don't forget to add "... and due to laws that are favorable to me being able to do this" to your laundry list.
If you can sell your company to someone else, that means someone else can do what you did. And that, to me, means your "worth" isn't as much as you think it is. In other words, you're easily replaceable. You're not unique. You're not special.
You may have figured out how to do something differently before others, but you rely on a set of laws that prevent others from doing the same exact thing as you (stifling competition).
So your success is not simply due to your "ingenuity, skill, hard work, and intelligence". It is also due to "an economic system that allows me to stop my competitors".
The result of that is "extra" that money is taken from consumers and given to you. Not exactly pure capitalism, is it?
If you are proposing what I think you're proposing -- which is that the government should NOT make up for inequities in ability to fund across communities -- then how would you propose an aging urban center with a negligible tax base and little money educate its children?
Tax breaks to residents won't help, because most of the people in the city are at such low levels of income that they aren't paying a lot in taxes to begin with.
Are you going to use the magical "jobs will appear and everyone will live happily ever after" argument?
What will you do when this large group of uneducated people -- unable to get a job in the global economy -- comes marching on your gated community with torches and clubs, because they have absolutely no hope in life since they couldn't afford to get educated?