What did we do before there was a Deptartment of Education? What did we do before there was Medicaid and Medicare?
We were a different society before these things, and the world was very different. If a little community in Idaho didn't value education that much and only taught its residents 50% of Boston, it didn't matter, because its residents only needed to know how to survive in Idaho, in their local community.
We are now in a global competition. It most definitely matters if 75% of the towns in the country don't educate children properly, because the fate of the nation depends on the success of ALL our children.
Then the market could determine what is successful and what gets adopted.
I live in an urban area. Our education system stinks. That has forced much of the middle class out of the city. In other words, the burden of paying for education is left with people who can't afford it.
The result is astromonical property values in communities surrounding the city (as everyone wants to live there) and plumetting property values in the city. The low property attracts the lower class, who consume more resources and contribute little the the city.
The market pressures are not forcing us to improve ourselves because we don't have the money to do this. It's not a pretty picture.
In the business world, a company in such a downward spiral would go out of business, it would cease to exist. That's how a market works.
In the real world, this is impossible. It can only get worse and worse. Cities can only be left with more expenses and fewer income. You can't ever pull out of the downward spiral because there is no bottom.
I would think that Liberaterianism should not believe in the artificial political constructs of cities and states. That means that everything is market-based. That eliminates the "free ride" where a person works just hard enough to live in a "nice" community and gets the benefits of something that was paid for by someone else.
Taken to the extreme, that would be true classism. Nice if you're one of the privileged, but lousy if you're not.
Well, "stupid" is just a word I used to get some attention, but seriously, every argument to combat decreased standard of living starts with "acquire more skills".
That completely ignores the fact that a percentage of people will not be able to acquire skills. It's like telling recently unemployed people in the textile industry that if they had become doctors instead of textile workers, things would be OK. It's also like telling those people to now go to medical school.
The other fatal flaw is that when the race to the bottom happens within our country, we can mitigate the severe impact of job loss by slowing it down with things like minimum wages, safety laws, etc. But when it happens between countries, with no central government to intervene or impose basic human standards, we must all participate in the race at the lowest level.
Hence if all of China is working 7-day, 18 hour weeks, we will all soon be working 7-day, 18 hour weeks if we are to compete with them. And if you don't have what it takes to be an "innovator", you better get used to it.
Oh yeah, since most of these developing countries don't have things like health care or social safety nets, we must get rid of those too, or we won't be able to compete.
And the end result will be equalized salaries across the globe.
Problem is, for the skilled, that means a lot of wealth regardless of country, but for the unskilled, that means abject poverty, also regardless of country.
In other words, our rich will get richer, our poor will get poorer, but we'll see both very rich and very poor in every country.
And if any country tries to remedy the disparty between rich and poor via social programs, they instantly become unable to compete with countries that don't.
Doesn't that sound ripe for a revolution? After all, poverty is mostly relative, and when faced with seeing extreme wealth in your backyard, wealth that you cannot partake in, doesn't that just breed jealousy?
The article's basic premise -- that Americans have a lock on innovation -- is hugely flawed. He argues that Americans are innately innovative; he then uses inventions such as "human flight, refrigeration, electrification, the telephone, automobiles, television, computers, space travel and the Internet" as examples to prove his point.
The USA was able to "invent" those things because we were already involved in manufacturing similar things. Plus, nearly every one of those inventions was perfected at a time when industrialization in the USA was far beyond other countries.
The Wright brothers didn't just sit in a room with a pad and a paper, draw up plans for an airplane, then offshore production to China. They were bicycle manufacturers, and they used that knowledge to their benefit. I'd say that without that background, they wouldn't have invented anything.
If Richard Miller thinks that the USA has a lock on innovation, he's no better off than those who thought we had a lock on white collar jobs.
[i]Certian buyers take almost a fricking week to pay, some sellers will ship when they get around to it in a couple of weeks and thise stuff needs to be noted to improve EBAY service style.[/i]
This is tricky. There are many things that affect the payment. For example, if the seller takes PayPal, I pay within minutes of winning the auction. But sometimes they don't, so I send a check within a couple of days. Then there are the sellers who only want a money order. Then there are the sellers who won't even accept a bank MO, they want a postal money order.
Then there are the sellers who don't put their contact information in their profile, so if I'm at work and forgot to forward the "winning notice" to my work PC, I don't know where to pay.
And don't forget the sellers who don't tell you the total including shipping for a few days. Why should my payment be judged on when the auction ends?
Each one of things is a factor in how long it takes me to pay.
Remember, when you use eBay, you're not buying from a company, nor are you selling to a company. You're dealing with individuals. That's how you can get such low prices. Waiting a few days for payment or delivery is part of the process.
This is called the Tragedy of the Commons. It has been described as a dangerous flaw to capitalism.
The presmise is that if you have a town commons, and each farmer is allowed to let his cow graze there for free, the amount of damage to the commons caused by one extra cow is a lot less than the amount of profit that the cow would bring the farmer. The only incentive is for each farmer to put as many cows as possible on the commons, until it becomes unusable.
Any farmer that does not participate in the game of raising the stakes will presumably go out of business because he will make less profit than the other farmers.
The only solution to the problem is an authority placing rules on the commons. Since we have no world government, this is not possible.
The US should try to compete by growing R&D, getting and keeping knowledge workers, using NASA etc., as a springboard to newer techs, which the developing nations can only dream of.
Do you honestly believe that you can take any one of the USA's 270 million people and train them to become a "knowledge worker", or get them to work for NASA?
What about the rest of the people? We either cut them loose and let them fend for themselves (which will probably end up in a 18th century french-like experience) or we support them with vast social programs, paid for by the people left standing.
Neither proposition is desirable.
We need to be able to provide livable jobs in this country for people of any level of skill. Sure, if you're only capable of being a burger flipper you won't get the same spoils as someone qualified to lead a large multinational corporation, but that doesn't mean that the burger flipper should be euthanized because he can't afford to live in the US, yet doesn't have enough skills to become that CEO.
Ah, you've listened to Rush Limbaugh. There's a big difference though.
When the country shifted from faming to other industry, if you remained a farmer your life didn't change. No one "fired" you. If you wanted to, you could still eke out an existence on the daily farm, working from dawn until dusk, until the day you died.
OR
You could get one of those newfangled "factory jobs". You'd have to learn new skills, but they were generally achievable for most farmers since it was still somewhat manual labor. You could learn the new job in a couple of weeks. But the nice thing was that you got paid more, so you could buy your food instead of growing it. Your free time increased, and you were able to raise your standard of living.
But now, we're being told "you're going to lose your job because 80% of the jobs in the US can be done cheaper elsewhere". We're not given this newfangled job where we will have to learn new skills, work a bit harder, but have more free time and have a higher standard of living.
Some of us will be able to get other jobs, but only the ones who can afford to risk their own money for a lot of education on a profession that still might be offshored.
And the rest of us will have to work longer hours in order to compete with the rest of the world. And we're going to have a lower standard of living because our wages will be reduced.
We're moving to an economy where if you're the best and the brightest, you'll be OK, but if you're not, then you'll be as poor as the poorest person in the world.
How is that a Good Thing for this country? Change may be tough, but rapid change for the worse is unbearable. If our population attains the same demographics as the population of a third world country, then things common to third world countries -- like riots, coups, dictators -- will happen here too.
All we have to do is restore the mobility of labor. Make the borders as open to people as they are to capital.
Think of the social ramifications of this. Families would be splintered. You wouldn't get to see your kids or grandkids because they'd be halfway across the world chasing the jobs.
Kids wouldn't attend the same school from one year to the next. There are plenty of studies done at how screwed up kids are who move around a lot (like every time their deadbeat parents stop paying the rent). I can't even imagine what a completly mobile workforce would do to them.
Histories would be lost -- you wouldn't have the old guy who grew up in the town and lived there all his life. There would be no "community memory" because there would no longer be lasting communities.
Your idea works well if we have the ability to live and work in vastly different places, with instantaneous transport between the two, but that probably brings up other problems too, like everyone wanting to live in Hawaii and work in India.
Countries matter. We don't have a world government (nor do I think we need one). If work can shift outside the boundaries of countries, those countries have less ability to provide for their citizens. That's a bad thing.
In my opinion, I believe that localism should be explored before globalism in nearly every situation. If you can buy eggs from your neighbor or from India at the same price, there is certainly more value to buying from your neighbor, because the odds are that he might spend the money on your business, while the person from India will most likely not.
>>Yeah, but I wouldn't be able to compete with you.
Why not? Whoever is the most efficient wins.
No, that's not true. Whoever brings the highest production per spent dollar wins.
You're mistaken if you think the fight is between a US worker and an Indian worker. It's not. It's between workers and companies.
If I, as a US worker, come up with a process for my company to cut coding time to 10% of what it was so that now I provide the same value as someone from India who costs 10% of my salary, my company is just as likely to take that innovation, bring it to India, and use it to cut costs to 1/100th of what they were.
The fight isn't fair when you're fighting the referee.
Easy. It was both the power that he wielded (made possible by his timing) and the price that makes it extortion.
I'll give you an example that makes it clear.
Let's say you're going on a camping trip in East Bunfrick NY. There's a great campsite on an island, and you rent a boat from a company called Penny Rent-a-Boat for $10. In their 50 page contract is an obscure clause that says that the company can take their boat back at any time, at their discretion.
You take the boat over to the island campground and have a great time camping. You go to bed, and wake up in the morning to find the boat being towed away by a Penny Rent-a-Boat agent. He tells you that the company is exercising their option to take their property back, and that you'll just have to fend for yourself on this island in the middle of nowhere. But he's willing to give the boat back if you give him your credit card and pay him $10k.
That's called extortion. Look up the definition:
The act of extorting; the act or practice of wresting anything from a person by force, by threats, or by any undue exercise of power; undue exaction; overcharge
This is exactly what the guy did. He set himself up in a position of undue power, and he then attempted to extract an exorbitant sum of money for vital services, with a threat to back up his position.
Sounds like the sheriff has a legal case to me, and it also sounds like he's very interested in prosecuting. This guy was an idiot, and he pulled this trick on the wrong party.
The guy may not have been 100% illegal, but he's borderline, because it seems he acted in bad faith.
He lined up an unsavvy client and gave them a price they couldn't refuse. They took the bait. He hooked them for three years, got them used to doing things with the site, and then when the time was right, he said "hey, in order to keep this vital tool you have, you have to pony up $300k, or I pull the plug."
That's as bad as someone being unsavvy and paying a company to design and host your website, and then after you've gained a very public presence, having that company say "oh yeah, by the way the domain is registered in our name, not yours, and we're going to sell it to your competitor if you don't give us $200k".
Or to translate this to non-computer talk, that's like bringing your car to the mechanic, telling him to fix whatever's wrong with it, and then having him tell you "sorry, my fee is $10k if you want your car back, since we didn't agree on a rate ahead of time."
As you know, any request for a file is a hit. So what the guy probably did is put 3.5 million images on one page, and voila!, the one person in the world interested in this site did the trick.
I think it may need some protection; believe me, I have spend YEARS and tens of thousands of dollars gathering and organizing the data that I make available online for free (I get ad revenue). I realize that someone could theoretically come in and hammer away at my server, downloading it all in one fell swoop, and then set up a site directly competing with mine in 10 minutes.
However, I also believe that the laws related to unfair business practices would be in my favor. I can't prove that, but I believe it based on what I understand about these kinds of laws.
I don't think that I should be given a sword that I can wield against anyone who uses any amount of data from my database -- in fact, I know data gets used all the time all over the world (I have ways of knowing if the data is from my site or not). And I don't mind, because none of this usage is directly competing with my site, and if the usage is done right, it can even enhance the public's awareness of my site.
But the simple fact of the matter is that I recognize that I was able to build the data in my database because someone else, perhaps even 50 years ago, decided to compile this data into a book or almanac. I can now use the data from that book to enhance and add value to it, and the public benefits (as do I).
Plus, I generally respect the work done by others; when gathering data, I respect competing organizations by not using them as a primary source, I use the official sources of data. But the conflict comes in when the official source can also own the data for profit. At that point the data is locked away for good, ala Disney's copyrights.
OK, I admit, I was wrong in my interpretation. I still think this is bad because it causes people to gather the same facts repeatedly; no one can use someone else's "database"
I think it's a problem that the legislation fails to define words like "large" and "substantial", when defining a database. Is 100 records "large"? Is a thousand? Is a million? If I copy 1000 records from a million-record database, is that "substantial copying"? Is having a multi-million dollar computer system to compute stock quotes "substantial expense", meaning that all stock quotes are copyrighted?
News-reporting exception aside, this still would put too much power into the hands of "fact creators", especially in the world of sports, but also in many other areas.
For example, the NBA would "own" its player statistics, because technically speaking, it compiled them into a database. No one else could use them without either licensing, or being at the game and keeping score themselves (which wouldn't be official anyway). You might be able to report them, but you couldn't create an almanc with them in it.
The airlines could own a list of routes that they travel. You couldn't use the airline's site to compile your own list, because you would be using their database.
The Dow would own stock quotes. You couldn't use any source to compile your own analysis history because it all originated in the Dow's database.
The TV networks would own their TV schedules. Any list they released would be protected under this law.
A college would own a list of courses that it offered. Unless you were willing to monitor every room occupied during a semester, or unless you were willing to interview a ton of students to find out what they were taking, you wouldn't be able to compile your own list.
This law is too broad, and doesn't address a pain that this country is suffering. There isn't a dearth of databases out there that are being hacked and freely distributed.
This bill is about corporate America wanting to create a new tangible piece of IP: facts.
This isn't exactly true. Someone wanting to compile a sports almanac would not be allowed to do so, because the sports leagues would claim that their publication of official information constitutes a database, therefore they own things like scores and statistics.
The Dow could claim that their daily release of stock closings constitues a database.
The phone company COULD own data in the phone book, and any derivative thereof, because they would be the ones creating the facts (the numbers).
The people who record the facts the first time (in essence, creating them) would get to own them. And in sports, facts are usually recorded by a single official source.
It isn't a good thing when the people who can create a fact can also own it.
As for database overlap, that wouldn't be a problem if this law were implemented. Separate creations of the same set of facts are still separate.
This could actually still be a problem. The question is "can he who creates a fact own that fact"? I'll use sports, since that directly affects a website I operate.
Let's say that the NBA decides the official scoring of all its basketball games. They are the sole creators of those facts.
Yet this law would also allow them to copyright those facts too, since it could claim the scoring is a database. Even if they published the facts in a book, they could call it a database. No one else could republish the official NBA scoring unless they only pulished a player or two.
And you can't compile these facts yourself, because by definition, only the NBA can compile them. You'll have to pony up $50k or so to the NBA to license them.
Is that a good thing?
Now what if you decide to use the local newspaper's microfilm to compile the sports scores from the previous year? Bzzzt. You'd be violating the property rights of the newspaper (or more likely the AP), which compiled those scores into a daily database.
Major sports are just itching to control their data. Both Baseball and Basketball have been involved in lawsuits involving data -- related to real-time broadcast, but this shows they want to control what they see as their "property".
What about stock quotes? Do you want to track and publish the results of your favorite stock somewhere? Bzzzt. You can't. You can't take them from the newspaper, nor can you even take them from the Dow's website. Both are protected databases. You would have to license such information.
How about this one -- let's say you want to list the courses offered by your local college. Bzzzt. You can't use their schedule to do this, because they own that database. You'd have to go to every class and ask the professor the name of the course, or you'd have to license the information.
While this bill may seem good on its face, the fact that there is no difference between a list of NBA scores from yesterday and a list of NBA scores from all time makes it a very dangerous piece of legislation.
Say I have a list of names , and another list of colours. If I make an association between the names and the colors, I have created something new, even if I didn't create the colors and I didn't create the names. You can now get a list of names that are associated with the color blue. That association is my creation. This new law would say that I own the association. It doesn't say that I own the names and colors.
And you think this is a GOOD thing?
Let's say that I take a list of cheeses and match them to either "sweet" "sour", or "salty". I create a database of these foods, which I now own.
Now let's say you want to create a list of foods and classify them as "sweet", "sour", or "salty".
Guess what! You can't include cheese, because I own that database.
"All" of our jobs? I don't think anybody suggested that. However I must comment that a lot of this debate seems to centre on how "we" defend "our" jobs, "we" being the USA. The people of India are entitled a slice of the world's wealth too, and if the developing world is now getting in on the industrial act then good luck to it.
Not directly, but everyone repeats the mantra that "work should be done in the country that can do it the cheapest". Since we have probably the highest wages in the world, then using this philosophy, every job that can be done elsewhere should be done elsewhere. That is the only line that has been drawn in the sand limiting globalization. Economists seem to want this to be in effect next week -- I have never heard an economist comment on the speed of job destruction.
Since there are billions of people in other countries who are willing and able to do our work for pennies on the dollar, and since our government has continued it's laissez-fair attitude, that would seem to be the end game here.
World economics are (supposedly) governed by the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank. Whether or not these bodies always act in the best interests of the developing world is up for debate. A certain amount of democratic accountability wouldn't go amiss.
Great. Let's let people govern us who haven't been elected by anyone. No chance those groups can be manipulated by big business, huh? And let's also let a bunch of economists run the show, people who couldn't give a rat's ass if 12-year olds work 80 hour weeks in terrible conditions, as long as the markets are free they get their jollies.
Your argument doesn't take into account the speed of the job shifts.
If jobs disappear a lot faster than new "demands for workers" appear, we have a big, big problem.
It makes no sense to have 100 people digging a hole with a teaspoon. It also doesn't make sense to take every one of our jobs and move them overseas because they can be done cheaper there, for obvious reasons.
The middle ground is where the debate lies. If we lose jobs too quickly, with no replacements, this country is in trouble. The recent feeding frenzy among corporations makes it evident that the corporations don't care about the speed, because each corporation, when looked at in a vaccuum, should make this move to improve profits. But when every corporation does it, we have a problem.
The government of this country needs to manage that a lot better. With an absence of a "world government" that is interested in arbiting such problems, we need to do what we can for ourselves. Unfortunately, both parties have been bought off by business to take a hands-off approach.
Sadly, this may actually wind up creating a world government, because in the absence of one, corporations are free to do what they want and a single country won't be able to stop them. It just takes one large country (like China) to allow slave or child labor, and we'll all have to allow it because if we don't, we won't be able to compete.
Can you even imagine how bad a world government would be?
You're the one not thinking it through -- you're using events in the past to describe a dissimilar situation and to predict a similar glossed-over outcome.
People were happy to move from farming to industrial labor. Farming was back-breaking labor, you worked from dusk until dawn, scratching out only enough of a living to sustain yourself. Given the choice between that and industrial work, where you could work for what appeared to be a huge wage increase, where you didn't have to work 7 days a week, where you didn't have to kill yourself physically, I can see why people didn't resist.
Yes, some people were left behind, but they were able to continue doing things the way they always had, and they were able to survive until their death. Their standard of living didn't improve, but it didn't fall either. And living on a farm, they didn't even know what they were missing.
When manufacturing left, most people were happy because the new service jobs were less physical. Instead of working 6 days in a plant, breathing in toxic fumes, doing mind-numbing things, people could increase their skills and work 9 to 5, pushing paper, doing things that were interesting and creative. And they were making twice as much money doing it.
However, that's where the sheen comes off the picture. A certain number of people weren't capable of making that transition. They were only suited for manual labor, and outside of factories, manual labor doesn't pay well. Neither do unskilled service jobs. So we have a whole crop of people who became poor. Take a look at any major city and you'll see scores of them.
Now our white collar jobs are being outsourced. But it's different this time. People WANT these jobs. They go to school for years and years so they can get them. These aren't jobs that suck.
Now if you can tell me that the next great job out there is going to require just 20 hours a week of my work, and that I'll be paid double what I get now, then I will stand on the Empire State Building and shout the praises of globalization.
However, no one has identified any such job yet. All we hear are vague promises that "creative jobs involving design will remain". Well, those jobs already exist, and the simple fact that there aren't a lot of them in the want ads shows that there isn't a whole slew of them waiting to be filled. They don't require any less work than any other white-collar job, and they require more skill, education, and intensity. Plus, no one can tell me why these jobs won't be outsourced too.
And no one can tell me what the people who aren't capable of one of these new, higher level jobs will do either. If history is an indicator, they will not fare well. If the bar is raised, the odds are greater that more people will fall under it. We will all have to support more and more people. In other words, bigger government, higher taxes. Except, of course, for the people instigating this change to globalization -- they have enough power to escape taxes and other social responsibilities.
Industrial evolution is not a bad thing. But rapid industrial evolution coupled with elimination of sustainable work for entire classes of people is most certainly bad. If it costs you $200k to train for a job that pays $50k/year but will be gone in 5 years, does that even make sense? That's what we're now facing.
Plus, in each of the two prior shifts (farming -> manufacturing, manufacturing -> services), the ordinary citizen was able to compete on his own. Individual wealth could be created by the guy down the street. In today's global world, it is impossible to compete with the global corporation because barriers of entry are too high. Lack of a "world government" (not something to wish for) removes any protection for the little guy.
Don't let theory blind you from what really happens in this country.
Oh yeah, since "services" aren't considered "manufacturing", these people don't even get assistance in retraining for these new mystery professions anyway. So we're going to all have to pay more in taxes in the future to get through this anyway. Hold on to your dwindling paycheck!
I run a website devoted to hockey. I could probably charge for the content, as it doesn't exist anywhere else, but I don't want to do that because 95% of my audience would go away. Even though I'd probably make the same amount of money that I make now, I'd rather the content be available to as many people as possible, even if it isn't getting me rich right now.
But there has to be a better way than charging subscriptions for the content. It's just too cumbersome. Sure, you may not mind paying for 1-2 sites, but would you really find the internet all that valuable if every site that you wanted to access asked you for a $10/month fee? Not to mention the overhead of keeping track of all your accounts. And remember, when you charge for content, you might convert your existing audience, but how do you get new people to sign up? They don't know what you have to offer because it is walled off.
Micropayments would be ideal, but those seem really far off.
I'd like to offer a different method of payments, something I've toyed with in my head for a couple of years but have only recently been able to solidify in my mind after seeing the Pepsi/iTunes commercials. If products could offer "credits" that were redeemable on web sites, to access content, and in turn, publishers could redeem the credits for money from the producers of consumer products.
So let's say you buy a can of Pepsi. Maybe they give you 1 credit. Maybe that credit is worth 1/10th of a cent. And maybe I'm going to charge people 1/10 of a cent to access my site for a day. So maybe my 15,000 visitors in a day would give me 15,000 credits, and perhaps after I reached a high enough level (perhaps 500,000 credits), I could redeem that to Pepsi for $5k in cash.
People would buy Pepsi over some no-name cola because Pepsi gives them access to a bunch of sites while no-name doesn't. Maybe to make it fair to people who don't buy soda, there could be a way to purchase these credits for cash.
1/10 of a cent to a can of soda isn't that big of a deal, although when you multiply by the number of cans Pepsi sells, it probably adds up. But I bet they could justify that they would make more than 1/10 of a cent somehow. Perhaps the participating sites would show ads for Pepsi or something.
It's in many ways the opposite of how the "online currencies" like Beenz or Flooz worked. Those currencies gave you credits for visiting websites, which you then redeemed for merchandise. That was a failure, of course, because the websites were in essence paying people to visit them. What a bad business model!
Now maybe it's completely inappropriate for a company to want to do this, but Pepsi seems to think it's a pretty good idea with iTunes, and it will probably increase Pepsi sales. Perhaps the exclusivity of the offering is what is driving their success, but who knows, maybe it could work.
I figured things out, and if I could just make 5 cents per visitor PER MONTH from my website, I could quit my day job and work at it full time. I could make it 100 times better than it is because I'd be able to work on it a lot more. And I think that 90% of my current visitors wouldn't think twice about paying 5 cents to get a month's worth of access to any site. The only thing stopping such a plan is the implementation.
Sadly, I'm making just 1/10 of that amount (1/5 of a cent per visitor per month) from advertising. Enough to survive, but not nearly enough to thrive.
Yes, but what's the end game here? It would appear that it would involve one group of insanely wealthy people, and the rest of the people living on sustenance wages.
We're all competing as fiercely as ever. People who can't compete are being left far, far behind. Those that can compete advance, but must always watch their backs.
Is that such a good thing? Won't most of us eventually become the equivalent of the 50-year old mill worker? Is that what life's about? And why is this all inevitable? Up until recent history, there was not free movement of jobs so this could occur, and people didn't seem to be that bad off. I suppose if you compare the rest of the world to the US that isn't a true statement, but if we discover intelligent life on Mars and everyone there has the equivalent of 10 SUV's, 50 houses, and limitless wealth, is the US suddenly a poor nation?
Is it such a good thing that our economy is progressing to the point where only the best and brightest thrive, and the rest suffer? Is every citizen of the US supposed to have what it takes to earn a PhD so they can ride the crest of the career wave? Isn't a diverse job base much more sustainable, where jobs with livable wages exist for those who are very talented, but also for those who aren't?
By the way, the subsidies you mention in India are, by US standards, below abject poverty. If the US cut its social programs so that the poor were merely guaranteed a bowl of rice and a doctor checkup, there would probably be rioting. It's a lot harder to lose something than it is to never have it. So although India has such programs, they pale in comparison to what is offered in the US.
Here are the "advantages" that India has over the US.
1) A lot of poor people and no social programs supporting them. Think of how much of your paycheck goes to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and other social programs. And think of how much of your employer's payroll taxes go to that stuff too. And then think about all the other taxes you pay to support people who aren't employed at livable wages. If your pay was cut by that amount, and your employers taxes were cut by that amount, you'd be in exactly the same place but making 30% less. We are no longer in a position to choose to have social programs. Competition from abroad is dictating that we eliminate all of them.
2) The servants. I think I could work harder if I could pay someone $35/month to do all my personal work. But having servants, especially low-paid servants, is frowned upon here in the US, and people won't generally work for so little since the government supports them at a much higher level. But if we eliminate our social programs, then maybe people will be willing to be our servants once again.
3) Medical. It sounds like the care you get in India is cheaper, but you get less too. People in this country need to ask some ethical questions, for example, "how much should be spent to save a life". When someone spends $300k to keep their 90 year old grandmother alive for an extra month, perhaps that is excessive. So we may have to make some hard choices (for example, should we spend a couple hundred thousand saving your baby that is born 2 months premature) in order to get our costs in line with India. In essence, we should not save the lives of anyone not capable of being a productive member of society. Any country that does will have higher costs.
But here's the insidious problem with this all. Capitalism is designed to LOWER costs. That means paying the least amount of benefits possible. Since people in other countries have it far worse than we do, the only way we can compete is to lower our benefits to their level. We can't rely on that "productivity" factor because it is no longer US Corporations vs. Foreign Corporations -- it's US Corporations against the workers that cost the most. Any innovation is immediately shared with the low-cost workers, and the benefit is negated.
So in other words, the only way to compete with India is to become exactly like India, or to get India to be exactly like us. But the latter won't work, because our corporations will just move the work to some other country. That means the former will be the more likely outcome.
Slashdot Mirror
What did we do before there was a Deptartment of Education? What did we do before there was Medicaid and Medicare?
We were a different society before these things, and the world was very different. If a little community in Idaho didn't value education that much and only taught its residents 50% of Boston, it didn't matter, because its residents only needed to know how to survive in Idaho, in their local community.
We are now in a global competition. It most definitely matters if 75% of the towns in the country don't educate children properly, because the fate of the nation depends on the success of ALL our children.
Then the market could determine what is successful and what gets adopted.
I live in an urban area. Our education system stinks. That has forced much of the middle class out of the city. In other words, the burden of paying for education is left with people who can't afford it.
The result is astromonical property values in communities surrounding the city (as everyone wants to live there) and plumetting property values in the city. The low property attracts the lower class, who consume more resources and contribute little the the city.
The market pressures are not forcing us to improve ourselves because we don't have the money to do this. It's not a pretty picture.
In the business world, a company in such a downward spiral would go out of business, it would cease to exist. That's how a market works.
In the real world, this is impossible. It can only get worse and worse. Cities can only be left with more expenses and fewer income. You can't ever pull out of the downward spiral because there is no bottom.
I would think that Liberaterianism should not believe in the artificial political constructs of cities and states. That means that everything is market-based. That eliminates the "free ride" where a person works just hard enough to live in a "nice" community and gets the benefits of something that was paid for by someone else.
Taken to the extreme, that would be true classism. Nice if you're one of the privileged, but lousy if you're not.
Well, "stupid" is just a word I used to get some attention, but seriously, every argument to combat decreased standard of living starts with "acquire more skills".
That completely ignores the fact that a percentage of people will not be able to acquire skills. It's like telling recently unemployed people in the textile industry that if they had become doctors instead of textile workers, things would be OK. It's also like telling those people to now go to medical school.
The other fatal flaw is that when the race to the bottom happens within our country, we can mitigate the severe impact of job loss by slowing it down with things like minimum wages, safety laws, etc. But when it happens between countries, with no central government to intervene or impose basic human standards, we must all participate in the race at the lowest level.
Hence if all of China is working 7-day, 18 hour weeks, we will all soon be working 7-day, 18 hour weeks if we are to compete with them. And if you don't have what it takes to be an "innovator", you better get used to it.
Oh yeah, since most of these developing countries don't have things like health care or social safety nets, we must get rid of those too, or we won't be able to compete.
And the end result will be equalized salaries across the globe.
Problem is, for the skilled, that means a lot of wealth regardless of country, but for the unskilled, that means abject poverty, also regardless of country.
In other words, our rich will get richer, our poor will get poorer, but we'll see both very rich and very poor in every country.
And if any country tries to remedy the disparty between rich and poor via social programs, they instantly become unable to compete with countries that don't.
Doesn't that sound ripe for a revolution? After all, poverty is mostly relative, and when faced with seeing extreme wealth in your backyard, wealth that you cannot partake in, doesn't that just breed jealousy?
The article's basic premise -- that Americans have a lock on innovation -- is hugely flawed. He argues that Americans are innately innovative; he then uses inventions such as "human flight, refrigeration, electrification, the telephone, automobiles, television, computers, space travel and the Internet" as examples to prove his point.
The USA was able to "invent" those things because we were already involved in manufacturing similar things. Plus, nearly every one of those inventions was perfected at a time when industrialization in the USA was far beyond other countries.
The Wright brothers didn't just sit in a room with a pad and a paper, draw up plans for an airplane, then offshore production to China. They were bicycle manufacturers, and they used that knowledge to their benefit. I'd say that without that background, they wouldn't have invented anything.
If Richard Miller thinks that the USA has a lock on innovation, he's no better off than those who thought we had a lock on white collar jobs.
[i]Certian buyers take almost a fricking week to pay, some sellers will ship when they get around to it in a couple of weeks and thise stuff needs to be noted to improve EBAY service style.[/i]
This is tricky. There are many things that affect the payment. For example, if the seller takes PayPal, I pay within minutes of winning the auction. But sometimes they don't, so I send a check within a couple of days. Then there are the sellers who only want a money order. Then there are the sellers who won't even accept a bank MO, they want a postal money order.
Then there are the sellers who don't put their contact information in their profile, so if I'm at work and forgot to forward the "winning notice" to my work PC, I don't know where to pay.
And don't forget the sellers who don't tell you the total including shipping for a few days. Why should my payment be judged on when the auction ends?
Each one of things is a factor in how long it takes me to pay.
Remember, when you use eBay, you're not buying from a company, nor are you selling to a company. You're dealing with individuals. That's how you can get such low prices. Waiting a few days for payment or delivery is part of the process.
Ralph
This is called the Tragedy of the Commons. It has been described as a dangerous flaw to capitalism.
The presmise is that if you have a town commons, and each farmer is allowed to let his cow graze there for free, the amount of damage to the commons caused by one extra cow is a lot less than the amount of profit that the cow would bring the farmer. The only incentive is for each farmer to put as many cows as possible on the commons, until it becomes unusable.
Any farmer that does not participate in the game of raising the stakes will presumably go out of business because he will make less profit than the other farmers.
The only solution to the problem is an authority placing rules on the commons. Since we have no world government, this is not possible.
The US should try to compete by growing R&D, getting and keeping knowledge workers, using NASA etc., as a springboard to newer techs, which the developing nations can only dream of.
Do you honestly believe that you can take any one of the USA's 270 million people and train them to become a "knowledge worker", or get them to work for NASA?
What about the rest of the people? We either cut them loose and let them fend for themselves (which will probably end up in a 18th century french-like experience) or we support them with vast social programs, paid for by the people left standing.
Neither proposition is desirable.
We need to be able to provide livable jobs in this country for people of any level of skill. Sure, if you're only capable of being a burger flipper you won't get the same spoils as someone qualified to lead a large multinational corporation, but that doesn't mean that the burger flipper should be euthanized because he can't afford to live in the US, yet doesn't have enough skills to become that CEO.
Ah, you've listened to Rush Limbaugh. There's a big difference though.
When the country shifted from faming to other industry, if you remained a farmer your life didn't change. No one "fired" you. If you wanted to, you could still eke out an existence on the daily farm, working from dawn until dusk, until the day you died.
OR
You could get one of those newfangled "factory jobs". You'd have to learn new skills, but they were generally achievable for most farmers since it was still somewhat manual labor. You could learn the new job in a couple of weeks. But the nice thing was that you got paid more, so you could buy your food instead of growing it. Your free time increased, and you were able to raise your standard of living.
But now, we're being told "you're going to lose your job because 80% of the jobs in the US can be done cheaper elsewhere". We're not given this newfangled job where we will have to learn new skills, work a bit harder, but have more free time and have a higher standard of living.
Some of us will be able to get other jobs, but only the ones who can afford to risk their own money for a lot of education on a profession that still might be offshored.
And the rest of us will have to work longer hours in order to compete with the rest of the world. And we're going to have a lower standard of living because our wages will be reduced.
We're moving to an economy where if you're the best and the brightest, you'll be OK, but if you're not, then you'll be as poor as the poorest person in the world.
How is that a Good Thing for this country? Change may be tough, but rapid change for the worse is unbearable. If our population attains the same demographics as the population of a third world country, then things common to third world countries -- like riots, coups, dictators -- will happen here too.
Not a pretty picture.
All we have to do is restore the mobility of labor. Make the borders as open to people as they are to capital.
Think of the social ramifications of this. Families would be splintered. You wouldn't get to see your kids or grandkids because they'd be halfway across the world chasing the jobs.
Kids wouldn't attend the same school from one year to the next. There are plenty of studies done at how screwed up kids are who move around a lot (like every time their deadbeat parents stop paying the rent). I can't even imagine what a completly mobile workforce would do to them.
Histories would be lost -- you wouldn't have the old guy who grew up in the town and lived there all his life. There would be no "community memory" because there would no longer be lasting communities.
Your idea works well if we have the ability to live and work in vastly different places, with instantaneous transport between the two, but that probably brings up other problems too, like everyone wanting to live in Hawaii and work in India.
Free movement of people has its downsides too.
Countries matter. We don't have a world government (nor do I think we need one). If work can shift outside the boundaries of countries, those countries have less ability to provide for their citizens. That's a bad thing.
In my opinion, I believe that localism should be explored before globalism in nearly every situation. If you can buy eggs from your neighbor or from India at the same price, there is certainly more value to buying from your neighbor, because the odds are that he might spend the money on your business, while the person from India will most likely not.
>>Yeah, but I wouldn't be able to compete with you.
Why not? Whoever is the most efficient wins.
No, that's not true. Whoever brings the highest production per spent dollar wins.
You're mistaken if you think the fight is between a US worker and an Indian worker. It's not. It's between workers and companies.
If I, as a US worker, come up with a process for my company to cut coding time to 10% of what it was so that now I provide the same value as someone from India who costs 10% of my salary, my company is just as likely to take that innovation, bring it to India, and use it to cut costs to 1/100th of what they were.
The fight isn't fair when you're fighting the referee.
Easy. It was both the power that he wielded (made possible by his timing) and the price that makes it extortion.
I'll give you an example that makes it clear.
Let's say you're going on a camping trip in East Bunfrick NY. There's a great campsite on an island, and you rent a boat from a company called Penny Rent-a-Boat for $10. In their 50 page contract is an obscure clause that says that the company can take their boat back at any time, at their discretion.
You take the boat over to the island campground and have a great time camping. You go to bed, and wake up in the morning to find the boat being towed away by a Penny Rent-a-Boat agent. He tells you that the company is exercising their option to take their property back, and that you'll just have to fend for yourself on this island in the middle of nowhere. But he's willing to give the boat back if you give him your credit card and pay him $10k.
That's called extortion. Look up the definition:
The act of extorting; the act or practice of wresting anything from a person by force, by threats, or by any undue exercise of power; undue exaction; overcharge
This is exactly what the guy did. He set himself up in a position of undue power, and he then attempted to extract an exorbitant sum of money for vital services, with a threat to back up his position.
Sounds like the sheriff has a legal case to me, and it also sounds like he's very interested in prosecuting. This guy was an idiot, and he pulled this trick on the wrong party.
The guy may not have been 100% illegal, but he's borderline, because it seems he acted in bad faith.
He lined up an unsavvy client and gave them a price they couldn't refuse. They took the bait. He hooked them for three years, got them used to doing things with the site, and then when the time was right, he said "hey, in order to keep this vital tool you have, you have to pony up $300k, or I pull the plug."
That's as bad as someone being unsavvy and paying a company to design and host your website, and then after you've gained a very public presence, having that company say "oh yeah, by the way the domain is registered in our name, not yours, and we're going to sell it to your competitor if you don't give us $200k".
Or to translate this to non-computer talk, that's like bringing your car to the mechanic, telling him to fix whatever's wrong with it, and then having him tell you "sorry, my fee is $10k if you want your car back, since we didn't agree on a rate ahead of time."
These all sound the same to me.
Ralph
No, he said "3.5 million hits per month".
As you know, any request for a file is a hit. So what the guy probably did is put 3.5 million images on one page, and voila!, the one person in the world interested in this site did the trick.
I think it may need some protection; believe me, I have spend YEARS and tens of thousands of dollars gathering and organizing the data that I make available online for free (I get ad revenue). I realize that someone could theoretically come in and hammer away at my server, downloading it all in one fell swoop, and then set up a site directly competing with mine in 10 minutes.
However, I also believe that the laws related to unfair business practices would be in my favor. I can't prove that, but I believe it based on what I understand about these kinds of laws.
I don't think that I should be given a sword that I can wield against anyone who uses any amount of data from my database -- in fact, I know data gets used all the time all over the world (I have ways of knowing if the data is from my site or not). And I don't mind, because none of this usage is directly competing with my site, and if the usage is done right, it can even enhance the public's awareness of my site.
But the simple fact of the matter is that I recognize that I was able to build the data in my database because someone else, perhaps even 50 years ago, decided to compile this data into a book or almanac. I can now use the data from that book to enhance and add value to it, and the public benefits (as do I).
Plus, I generally respect the work done by others; when gathering data, I respect competing organizations by not using them as a primary source, I use the official sources of data. But the conflict comes in when the official source can also own the data for profit. At that point the data is locked away for good, ala Disney's copyrights.
Ralph
OK, I admit, I was wrong in my interpretation. I still think this is bad because it causes people to gather the same facts repeatedly; no one can use someone else's "database"
I think it's a problem that the legislation fails to define words like "large" and "substantial", when defining a database. Is 100 records "large"? Is a thousand? Is a million? If I copy 1000 records from a million-record database, is that "substantial copying"? Is having a multi-million dollar computer system to compute stock quotes "substantial expense", meaning that all stock quotes are copyrighted?
News-reporting exception aside, this still would put too much power into the hands of "fact creators", especially in the world of sports, but also in many other areas.
For example, the NBA would "own" its player statistics, because technically speaking, it compiled them into a database. No one else could use them without either licensing, or being at the game and keeping score themselves (which wouldn't be official anyway). You might be able to report them, but you couldn't create an almanc with them in it.
The airlines could own a list of routes that they travel. You couldn't use the airline's site to compile your own list, because you would be using their database.
The Dow would own stock quotes. You couldn't use any source to compile your own analysis history because it all originated in the Dow's database.
The TV networks would own their TV schedules. Any list they released would be protected under this law.
A college would own a list of courses that it offered. Unless you were willing to monitor every room occupied during a semester, or unless you were willing to interview a ton of students to find out what they were taking, you wouldn't be able to compile your own list.
This law is too broad, and doesn't address a pain that this country is suffering. There isn't a dearth of databases out there that are being hacked and freely distributed.
This bill is about corporate America wanting to create a new tangible piece of IP: facts.
This isn't exactly true. Someone wanting to compile a sports almanac would not be allowed to do so, because the sports leagues would claim that their publication of official information constitutes a database, therefore they own things like scores and statistics.
The Dow could claim that their daily release of stock closings constitues a database.
The phone company COULD own data in the phone book, and any derivative thereof, because they would be the ones creating the facts (the numbers).
The people who record the facts the first time (in essence, creating them) would get to own them. And in sports, facts are usually recorded by a single official source.
It isn't a good thing when the people who can create a fact can also own it.
As for database overlap, that wouldn't be a problem if this law were implemented. Separate creations of the same set of facts are still separate.
This could actually still be a problem. The question is "can he who creates a fact own that fact"? I'll use sports, since that directly affects a website I operate.
Let's say that the NBA decides the official scoring of all its basketball games. They are the sole creators of those facts.
Yet this law would also allow them to copyright those facts too, since it could claim the scoring is a database. Even if they published the facts in a book, they could call it a database. No one else could republish the official NBA scoring unless they only pulished a player or two.
And you can't compile these facts yourself, because by definition, only the NBA can compile them. You'll have to pony up $50k or so to the NBA to license them.
Is that a good thing?
Now what if you decide to use the local newspaper's microfilm to compile the sports scores from the previous year? Bzzzt. You'd be violating the property rights of the newspaper (or more likely the AP), which compiled those scores into a daily database.
Major sports are just itching to control their data. Both Baseball and Basketball have been involved in lawsuits involving data -- related to real-time broadcast, but this shows they want to control what they see as their "property".
What about stock quotes? Do you want to track and publish the results of your favorite stock somewhere? Bzzzt. You can't. You can't take them from the newspaper, nor can you even take them from the Dow's website. Both are protected databases. You would have to license such information.
How about this one -- let's say you want to list the courses offered by your local college. Bzzzt. You can't use their schedule to do this, because they own that database. You'd have to go to every class and ask the professor the name of the course, or you'd have to license the information.
While this bill may seem good on its face, the fact that there is no difference between a list of NBA scores from yesterday and a list of NBA scores from all time makes it a very dangerous piece of legislation.
Ralph Slate
http://www.hockeydb.com
Say I have a list of names , and another list of colours. If I make an association between the names and the colors, I have created something new, even if I didn't create the colors and I didn't create the names. You can now get a list of names that are associated with the color blue. That association is my creation. This new law would say that I own the association. It doesn't say that I own the names and colors.
And you think this is a GOOD thing?
Let's say that I take a list of cheeses and match them to either "sweet" "sour", or "salty". I create a database of these foods, which I now own.
Now let's say you want to create a list of foods and classify them as "sweet", "sour", or "salty".
Guess what! You can't include cheese, because I own that database.
What a nightmare!
"All" of our jobs? I don't think anybody suggested that. However I must comment that a lot of this debate seems to centre on how "we" defend "our" jobs, "we" being the USA. The people of India are entitled a slice of the world's wealth too, and if the developing world is now getting in on the industrial act then good luck to it.
Not directly, but everyone repeats the mantra that "work should be done in the country that can do it the cheapest". Since we have probably the highest wages in the world, then using this philosophy, every job that can be done elsewhere should be done elsewhere. That is the only line that has been drawn in the sand limiting globalization. Economists seem to want this to be in effect next week -- I have never heard an economist comment on the speed of job destruction.
Since there are billions of people in other countries who are willing and able to do our work for pennies on the dollar, and since our government has continued it's laissez-fair attitude, that would seem to be the end game here.
World economics are (supposedly) governed by the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank. Whether or not these bodies always act in the best interests of the developing world is up for debate. A certain amount of democratic accountability wouldn't go amiss.
Great. Let's let people govern us who haven't been elected by anyone. No chance those groups can be manipulated by big business, huh? And let's also let a bunch of economists run the show, people who couldn't give a rat's ass if 12-year olds work 80 hour weeks in terrible conditions, as long as the markets are free they get their jollies.
Your argument doesn't take into account the speed of the job shifts.
If jobs disappear a lot faster than new "demands for workers" appear, we have a big, big problem.
It makes no sense to have 100 people digging a hole with a teaspoon. It also doesn't make sense to take every one of our jobs and move them overseas because they can be done cheaper there, for obvious reasons.
The middle ground is where the debate lies. If we lose jobs too quickly, with no replacements, this country is in trouble. The recent feeding frenzy among corporations makes it evident that the corporations don't care about the speed, because each corporation, when looked at in a vaccuum, should make this move to improve profits. But when every corporation does it, we have a problem.
The government of this country needs to manage that a lot better. With an absence of a "world government" that is interested in arbiting such problems, we need to do what we can for ourselves. Unfortunately, both parties have been bought off by business to take a hands-off approach.
Sadly, this may actually wind up creating a world government, because in the absence of one, corporations are free to do what they want and a single country won't be able to stop them. It just takes one large country (like China) to allow slave or child labor, and we'll all have to allow it because if we don't, we won't be able to compete.
Can you even imagine how bad a world government would be?
You're the one not thinking it through -- you're using events in the past to describe a dissimilar situation and to predict a similar glossed-over outcome.
People were happy to move from farming to industrial labor. Farming was back-breaking labor, you worked from dusk until dawn, scratching out only enough of a living to sustain yourself. Given the choice between that and industrial work, where you could work for what appeared to be a huge wage increase, where you didn't have to work 7 days a week, where you didn't have to kill yourself physically, I can see why people didn't resist.
Yes, some people were left behind, but they were able to continue doing things the way they always had, and they were able to survive until their death. Their standard of living didn't improve, but it didn't fall either. And living on a farm, they didn't even know what they were missing.
When manufacturing left, most people were happy because the new service jobs were less physical. Instead of working 6 days in a plant, breathing in toxic fumes, doing mind-numbing things, people could increase their skills and work 9 to 5, pushing paper, doing things that were interesting and creative. And they were making twice as much money doing it.
However, that's where the sheen comes off the picture. A certain number of people weren't capable of making that transition. They were only suited for manual labor, and outside of factories, manual labor doesn't pay well. Neither do unskilled service jobs. So we have a whole crop of people who became poor. Take a look at any major city and you'll see scores of them.
Now our white collar jobs are being outsourced. But it's different this time. People WANT these jobs. They go to school for years and years so they can get them. These aren't jobs that suck.
Now if you can tell me that the next great job out there is going to require just 20 hours a week of my work, and that I'll be paid double what I get now, then I will stand on the Empire State Building and shout the praises of globalization.
However, no one has identified any such job yet. All we hear are vague promises that "creative jobs involving design will remain". Well, those jobs already exist, and the simple fact that there aren't a lot of them in the want ads shows that there isn't a whole slew of them waiting to be filled. They don't require any less work than any other white-collar job, and they require more skill, education, and intensity. Plus, no one can tell me why these jobs won't be outsourced too.
And no one can tell me what the people who aren't capable of one of these new, higher level jobs will do either. If history is an indicator, they will not fare well. If the bar is raised, the odds are greater that more people will fall under it. We will all have to support more and more people. In other words, bigger government, higher taxes. Except, of course, for the people instigating this change to globalization -- they have enough power to escape taxes and other social responsibilities.
Industrial evolution is not a bad thing. But rapid industrial evolution coupled with elimination of sustainable work for entire classes of people is most certainly bad. If it costs you $200k to train for a job that pays $50k/year but will be gone in 5 years, does that even make sense? That's what we're now facing.
Plus, in each of the two prior shifts (farming -> manufacturing, manufacturing -> services), the ordinary citizen was able to compete on his own. Individual wealth could be created by the guy down the street. In today's global world, it is impossible to compete with the global corporation because barriers of entry are too high. Lack of a "world government" (not something to wish for) removes any protection for the little guy.
Don't let theory blind you from what really happens in this country.
Oh yeah, since "services" aren't considered "manufacturing", these people don't even get assistance in retraining for these new mystery professions anyway. So we're going to all have to pay more in taxes in the future to get through this anyway. Hold on to your dwindling paycheck!
I run a website devoted to hockey. I could probably charge for the content, as it doesn't exist anywhere else, but I don't want to do that because 95% of my audience would go away. Even though I'd probably make the same amount of money that I make now, I'd rather the content be available to as many people as possible, even if it isn't getting me rich right now.
But there has to be a better way than charging subscriptions for the content. It's just too cumbersome. Sure, you may not mind paying for 1-2 sites, but would you really find the internet all that valuable if every site that you wanted to access asked you for a $10/month fee? Not to mention the overhead of keeping track of all your accounts. And remember, when you charge for content, you might convert your existing audience, but how do you get new people to sign up? They don't know what you have to offer because it is walled off.
Micropayments would be ideal, but those seem really far off.
I'd like to offer a different method of payments, something I've toyed with in my head for a couple of years but have only recently been able to solidify in my mind after seeing the Pepsi/iTunes commercials. If products could offer "credits" that were redeemable on web sites, to access content, and in turn, publishers could redeem the credits for money from the producers of consumer products.
So let's say you buy a can of Pepsi. Maybe they give you 1 credit. Maybe that credit is worth 1/10th of a cent. And maybe I'm going to charge people 1/10 of a cent to access my site for a day. So maybe my 15,000 visitors in a day would give me 15,000 credits, and perhaps after I reached a high enough level (perhaps 500,000 credits), I could redeem that to Pepsi for $5k in cash.
People would buy Pepsi over some no-name cola because Pepsi gives them access to a bunch of sites while no-name doesn't. Maybe to make it fair to people who don't buy soda, there could be a way to purchase these credits for cash.
1/10 of a cent to a can of soda isn't that big of a deal, although when you multiply by the number of cans Pepsi sells, it probably adds up. But I bet they could justify that they would make more than 1/10 of a cent somehow. Perhaps the participating sites would show ads for Pepsi or something.
It's in many ways the opposite of how the "online currencies" like Beenz or Flooz worked. Those currencies gave you credits for visiting websites, which you then redeemed for merchandise. That was a failure, of course, because the websites were in essence paying people to visit them. What a bad business model!
Now maybe it's completely inappropriate for a company to want to do this, but Pepsi seems to think it's a pretty good idea with iTunes, and it will probably increase Pepsi sales. Perhaps the exclusivity of the offering is what is driving their success, but who knows, maybe it could work.
I figured things out, and if I could just make 5 cents per visitor PER MONTH from my website, I could quit my day job and work at it full time. I could make it 100 times better than it is because I'd be able to work on it a lot more. And I think that 90% of my current visitors wouldn't think twice about paying 5 cents to get a month's worth of access to any site. The only thing stopping such a plan is the implementation.
Sadly, I'm making just 1/10 of that amount (1/5 of a cent per visitor per month) from advertising. Enough to survive, but not nearly enough to thrive.
Ralph
Yes, but what's the end game here? It would appear that it would involve one group of insanely wealthy people, and the rest of the people living on sustenance wages.
We're all competing as fiercely as ever. People who can't compete are being left far, far behind. Those that can compete advance, but must always watch their backs.
Is that such a good thing? Won't most of us eventually become the equivalent of the 50-year old mill worker? Is that what life's about? And why is this all inevitable? Up until recent history, there was not free movement of jobs so this could occur, and people didn't seem to be that bad off. I suppose if you compare the rest of the world to the US that isn't a true statement, but if we discover intelligent life on Mars and everyone there has the equivalent of 10 SUV's, 50 houses, and limitless wealth, is the US suddenly a poor nation?
Is it such a good thing that our economy is progressing to the point where only the best and brightest thrive, and the rest suffer? Is every citizen of the US supposed to have what it takes to earn a PhD so they can ride the crest of the career wave? Isn't a diverse job base much more sustainable, where jobs with livable wages exist for those who are very talented, but also for those who aren't?
By the way, the subsidies you mention in India are, by US standards, below abject poverty. If the US cut its social programs so that the poor were merely guaranteed a bowl of rice and a doctor checkup, there would probably be rioting. It's a lot harder to lose something than it is to never have it. So although India has such programs, they pale in comparison to what is offered in the US.
Yes, that's excactly it.
Here are the "advantages" that India has over the US.
1) A lot of poor people and no social programs supporting them. Think of how much of your paycheck goes to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and other social programs. And think of how much of your employer's payroll taxes go to that stuff too. And then think about all the other taxes you pay to support people who aren't employed at livable wages. If your pay was cut by that amount, and your employers taxes were cut by that amount, you'd be in exactly the same place but making 30% less. We are no longer in a position to choose to have social programs. Competition from abroad is dictating that we eliminate all of them.
2) The servants. I think I could work harder if I could pay someone $35/month to do all my personal work. But having servants, especially low-paid servants, is frowned upon here in the US, and people won't generally work for so little since the government supports them at a much higher level. But if we eliminate our social programs, then maybe people will be willing to be our servants once again.
3) Medical. It sounds like the care you get in India is cheaper, but you get less too. People in this country need to ask some ethical questions, for example, "how much should be spent to save a life". When someone spends $300k to keep their 90 year old grandmother alive for an extra month, perhaps that is excessive. So we may have to make some hard choices (for example, should we spend a couple hundred thousand saving your baby that is born 2 months premature) in order to get our costs in line with India. In essence, we should not save the lives of anyone not capable of being a productive member of society. Any country that does will have higher costs.
But here's the insidious problem with this all. Capitalism is designed to LOWER costs. That means paying the least amount of benefits possible. Since people in other countries have it far worse than we do, the only way we can compete is to lower our benefits to their level. We can't rely on that "productivity" factor because it is no longer US Corporations vs. Foreign Corporations -- it's US Corporations against the workers that cost the most. Any innovation is immediately shared with the low-cost workers, and the benefit is negated.
So in other words, the only way to compete with India is to become exactly like India, or to get India to be exactly like us. But the latter won't work, because our corporations will just move the work to some other country. That means the former will be the more likely outcome.
Is everyone comfortable with that?