Is there a logical argument, from first principles
No, there isn't. If you like to deduce things from first principles, try math. The 5th Amendment was, like almost all other rights in the Constitution, written by pragmatists who knew their history. It was adopted to prevent an abuse that had existed for centuries. Whether it's derivable from "first principles" is not relevant, or even very interesting.
I'm sorry you find Cantonese confusing. Apparently that isn't a serious issue for Cantonese speakers, as in Cantonese speaking areas they have lights, windows and mirrors, and so presumably have found some way to distinguish when specifying those items.
It's not analogous to being able to speak the "Queen's English" vs. other varieties of English. Even American's can sometimes make themselves understood over there (worked for me). There really are no mutually unintelligible varieties of English. At worst, a thick accent may take some getting used to.
As I understand it from native speakers, Mandarin vs. Cantonese is completely different, as they're not mutually intelligible. OTOH the writing is a different story. Written Chinese is pretty much the same regardless of dialect. So while the Chinese system of writing is inferior to writing with an alphabet in many ways, it does serve the purpose of bridging dialects.
What in the hell does this have to do with the article? This has to do with a Chinese dialect, not race. It's kinda hard to even relate the article vs what you're saying because they're not even dealing with a major race issue over there.
They probably meant to post in the "Could Technology Create Modern-Day 'Leper Colonies'?" article, which demonstrates that racists aren't too bright.
there are people who will shell out for hand forged nails
P.T. Barnum was right.
there are those who don't plumb or illuminate their home with whatever is on sale at the local home improvement chain
Plumbing, they don't use copper or PEX? What do they use, hand formed lead just like the Romans did?
Are they also avoiding the use of electric light bulbs, or do they use some magical light bulbs for 100x the price? Great business idea: hand blown lightbulbs! So old fashioned, not even Edison did it that way.
I bet you buy all of your clothes for the lowest possible price
You lose - pay up.
millions of other people pay many times the price for functionally equivalent items based on their own perception of what makes clothes valuable
Most often that perception of value comes from a name that, through clever marketing, has some magic aura about it.
There are people who pay $300 for jeans exactly because they are made as close as possible to the "hand produced variety we used to have".
The only time jeans were made from hand woven denim is in some fool's fevered ahistorical imagination. Levi Strauss started making them in 1853, by which time machine spinning and weaving were nearly universal. Even the sewing machine was widely used.
Not everyone is a reflexive, lowest-common-denominator consumer.
So you're assuming that anything which isn't "hand made" is of poor quality. Not only is it often just the opposite (quality often improves through automation), but if it wasn't for all that shoddy stuff we've been making since the beginning of the industrial revolution, most people would live in such a way that they'd envy today's poor.
Is it a fad that someone buying a box of nails will choose the 100% automation produced variety, instead of paying 100x as much for the hand produced variety we used to have? How about people buying pipe to plumb a house, or do you think that indoor plumbing is a fad? How about electric lights. Are you betting on candles or kerosene lamps replacing them?
There's something wrong about paying a third-world worker a near-slave wage and shipping the result 6000 miles just to save a few pennies that is significantly less wrong when you replace the worker with a robot that's maintained by a reasonably-paid worker here at home. Automation is the future whereas standard of living arbitrage is just an exploitation of current imbalances.
Excellent but often ignored point. They're not the same, unless you think that nothing ever changes. Unfortunately many economists implicitly think that way (though of course they'd vociferously deny it). Take the old wine and wool example for free trade. Those are agricultural products, hence largely affected by climate and soil. England is not Portugal, and you can't turn it's farms and fields into Portugal's, so free trade makes sense in such situations. Manufacturing goods, information services, etc. are very different. Geography and climate matter little, and capabilities and productivity levels can be changed by a country's efforts. That's a type of change that's largely ignored. Free trade doesn't always make sense under those circumstances.
Why do people think that businesses need middle class families to have someone to buy goods?
Because historically it's true. Your argument that income distribution doesn't matter ignores important realities. Wealthy people consume a lower percentage of their income than others. Great, you say, then they can invest more! Invest in what? Productive investments like factories, improved technology, etc. aren't worthwhile unless you have enough customers. Not only do the rich spend less of their income, but they don't care much about price. They often buy expensive "craft made" goods that don't benefit from more capital investment. So what to invest in? Land? Like other unproductive investments it leads to bubbles if too much money is chasing too few returns.
The money is ALWAYS to be made in sloshing resources from one place to another.
Offshoring is about sloshing resources from one place to another; technological improvements are not. Technological improvements, meaning in this case improved productivity, can be used indefinitely and built upon for further improvement. Without that virtuous cycle, our standard of living wouldn't even be like the 18th century. By contrast, shipping the factories to China is arbitrage, and you'll lose the "advantage" when foreign labor rates increase or the exchange rate changes.
Most Americans have this stupid attitude that some kinds of jobs are just somehow below them.
What does that have to do with this post, which is about jobs manufacturing jobs becoming higher level? If you're looking for an excuse to spout your agenda, at least find a post that's relevant.
Those labor intensive middle class manufacturing jobs started disappearing when they started using automated spinning and weaving in the late 18th century, although the middle class agricultural work started disappearing in the 17th century with the agricultural revolution.
You take issue with referring to the ever fun-loving Taliban and al Qaida as enemies?
Cold fjord: regardless of whether I agree with them, I'd have a lot more respect for your opinions if you stopped attacking straw men. Where did the GP say anything like that? What he's questioning is how effective TPTB are at combating that enemy, how much of what TPTB spew is self-serving, and how much "collateral damage" they cause (with the ever attendant blowback, to use the CIA's own parlance).
We have committed to synergistically coordinate high-impact terrorism across multidisciplinary cells so that we may collaboratively provide access to inexpensive leadership skills in order to destroy infidels.
al-Qaeda was placing special emphasis on the recruitment of technicians and that "the skills most in demand" included expertise in drones and missile technology
In this job market they shouldn't have too much trouble.
Not that I'd ever do it myself of course, but just out of curiosity, how much do they pay?
BTW, are you a consistent fellow who thinks we should abandon all public health and safety measures, since life's a risk and we're all going to die anyway?
Society can't handle the costs of current increases to lifetimes.
But, but, but... you don't understand! Wise and thoughtful Slashdot posters realize we'll never be completely successful, so let's not toot our horns about what we have done.
lets give them that money to "study the newfound viruses to see which are most likely to jump to humans". I'm sure that could never end up being abused.
Give me a call when that "abuse" is up to 0.1% of our spending on the military-industrial complex, the educational-industrial complex, or bonuses for running successful scams in finance.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there a logical argument, from first principles
No, there isn't. If you like to deduce things from first principles, try math. The 5th Amendment was, like almost all other rights in the Constitution, written by pragmatists who knew their history. It was adopted to prevent an abuse that had existed for centuries. Whether it's derivable from "first principles" is not relevant, or even very interesting.
I'm sorry you find Cantonese confusing. Apparently that isn't a serious issue for Cantonese speakers, as in Cantonese speaking areas they have lights, windows and mirrors, and so presumably have found some way to distinguish when specifying those items.
That's because we Yanks wouldn't have them.
It's not analogous to being able to speak the "Queen's English" vs. other varieties of English. Even American's can sometimes make themselves understood over there (worked for me). There really are no mutually unintelligible varieties of English. At worst, a thick accent may take some getting used to.
As I understand it from native speakers, Mandarin vs. Cantonese is completely different, as they're not mutually intelligible. OTOH the writing is a different story. Written Chinese is pretty much the same regardless of dialect. So while the Chinese system of writing is inferior to writing with an alphabet in many ways, it does serve the purpose of bridging dialects.
What in the hell does this have to do with the article? This has to do with a Chinese dialect, not race. It's kinda hard to even relate the article vs what you're saying because they're not even dealing with a major race issue over there.
They probably meant to post in the "Could Technology Create Modern-Day 'Leper Colonies'?" article, which demonstrates that racists aren't too bright.
there are people who will shell out for hand forged nails
P.T. Barnum was right.
there are those who don't plumb or illuminate their home with whatever is on sale at the local home improvement chain
Plumbing, they don't use copper or PEX? What do they use, hand formed lead just like the Romans did?
Are they also avoiding the use of electric light bulbs, or do they use some magical light bulbs for 100x the price? Great business idea: hand blown lightbulbs! So old fashioned, not even Edison did it that way.
I bet you buy all of your clothes for the lowest possible price
You lose - pay up.
millions of other people pay many times the price for functionally equivalent items based on their own perception of what makes clothes valuable
Most often that perception of value comes from a name that, through clever marketing, has some magic aura about it.
There are people who pay $300 for jeans exactly because they are made as close as possible to the "hand produced variety we used to have".
The only time jeans were made from hand woven denim is in some fool's fevered ahistorical imagination. Levi Strauss started making them in 1853, by which time machine spinning and weaving were nearly universal. Even the sewing machine was widely used.
As for $300, those must be cheapos. Here are some for $2,000: http://www.rawrdenim.com/2011/03/momotaro-jeans-hand-woven-2000-dollars/ Sorry I can't afford them, but if there's a market, it's obvious some people just have too much money.
Not everyone is a reflexive, lowest-common-denominator consumer.
So you're assuming that anything which isn't "hand made" is of poor quality. Not only is it often just the opposite (quality often improves through automation), but if it wasn't for all that shoddy stuff we've been making since the beginning of the industrial revolution, most people would live in such a way that they'd envy today's poor.
Human whims are faddish.
Is it a fad that someone buying a box of nails will choose the 100% automation produced variety, instead of paying 100x as much for the hand produced variety we used to have? How about people buying pipe to plumb a house, or do you think that indoor plumbing is a fad? How about electric lights. Are you betting on candles or kerosene lamps replacing them?
There's something wrong about paying a third-world worker a near-slave wage and shipping the result 6000 miles just to save a few pennies that is significantly less wrong when you replace the worker with a robot that's maintained by a reasonably-paid worker here at home. Automation is the future whereas standard of living arbitrage is just an exploitation of current imbalances.
Excellent but often ignored point. They're not the same, unless you think that nothing ever changes. Unfortunately many economists implicitly think that way (though of course they'd vociferously deny it). Take the old wine and wool example for free trade. Those are agricultural products, hence largely affected by climate and soil. England is not Portugal, and you can't turn it's farms and fields into Portugal's, so free trade makes sense in such situations. Manufacturing goods, information services, etc. are very different. Geography and climate matter little, and capabilities and productivity levels can be changed by a country's efforts. That's a type of change that's largely ignored. Free trade doesn't always make sense under those circumstances.
Why do people think that businesses need middle class families to have someone to buy goods?
Because historically it's true. Your argument that income distribution doesn't matter ignores important realities. Wealthy people consume a lower percentage of their income than others. Great, you say, then they can invest more! Invest in what? Productive investments like factories, improved technology, etc. aren't worthwhile unless you have enough customers. Not only do the rich spend less of their income, but they don't care much about price. They often buy expensive "craft made" goods that don't benefit from more capital investment. So what to invest in? Land? Like other unproductive investments it leads to bubbles if too much money is chasing too few returns.
So what are we breeding here?
Do you believe in eugenics?
The money is ALWAYS to be made in sloshing resources from one place to another.
Offshoring is about sloshing resources from one place to another; technological improvements are not. Technological improvements, meaning in this case improved productivity, can be used indefinitely and built upon for further improvement. Without that virtuous cycle, our standard of living wouldn't even be like the 18th century. By contrast, shipping the factories to China is arbitrage, and you'll lose the "advantage" when foreign labor rates increase or the exchange rate changes.
Most Americans have this stupid attitude that some kinds of jobs are just somehow below them.
What does that have to do with this post, which is about jobs manufacturing jobs becoming higher level? If you're looking for an excuse to spout your agenda, at least find a post that's relevant.
Those labor intensive middle class manufacturing jobs started disappearing when they started using automated spinning and weaving in the late 18th century, although the middle class agricultural work started disappearing in the 17th century with the agricultural revolution.
Why don't you post as Ned Ludd instead of AC?
I wonder how much better the US would be if it were to stop intelligence surveillance of terrorists completely as some people have been suggesting.
Who has been suggesting it? I think it would be a bad idea, but monitoring 300M+ "terrorist suspects" suggests that they should narrow it down a bit.
Sounds competitive.
You take issue with referring to the ever fun-loving Taliban and al Qaida as enemies?
Cold fjord: regardless of whether I agree with them, I'd have a lot more respect for your opinions if you stopped attacking straw men. Where did the GP say anything like that? What he's questioning is how effective TPTB are at combating that enemy, how much of what TPTB spew is self-serving, and how much "collateral damage" they cause (with the ever attendant blowback, to use the CIA's own parlance).
What they really need is a mission statement.
We have committed to synergistically coordinate high-impact terrorism across multidisciplinary cells so that we may collaboratively provide access to inexpensive leadership skills in order to destroy infidels.
FTA:
al-Qaeda was placing special emphasis on the recruitment of technicians and that "the skills most in demand" included expertise in drones and missile technology
In this job market they shouldn't have too much trouble.
Not that I'd ever do it myself of course, but just out of curiosity, how much do they pay?
Or that al-Qaeda is yet another big organization pushing for an increase in the H-1B visa quota.
Life's a risk, you live, you die.
There is no risk - it's guaranteed you'll die.
BTW, are you a consistent fellow who thinks we should abandon all public health and safety measures, since life's a risk and we're all going to die anyway?
Society can't handle the costs of current increases to lifetimes.
Cite? Calculation?
or simply be a non-productive burden on an "entitlement" society
Good point. If you like, we can make sure you never make it to that stage of your life. Power of example and all.
But, but, but ... you don't understand! Wise and thoughtful Slashdot posters realize we'll never be completely successful, so let's not toot our horns about what we have done.
lets give them that money to "study the newfound viruses to see which are most likely to jump to humans". I'm sure that could never end up being abused.
Give me a call when that "abuse" is up to 0.1% of our spending on the military-industrial complex, the educational-industrial complex, or bonuses for running successful scams in finance.
If you write a readable Perl script, then you've completely missed the point of the language. Ever hear of job security?