The monopoly created by your friendly government? Even in those areas you still usually have more than one choice.
A monopoly BY DEFINITION means you have only a single choice of where to buy a product. If you have a few choices that is called an oligopoly. If you have only one customer that is called monopsony.
And even if you only have one choice you can still boycott, or vote with your feet and move.
Move where? From one town with a single provider of electricity to another town with a single provider of electricity? Wow. Great choice! [/sarcasm]
Neither of those options is available with the federal government.
You've never heard of immigration apparently... People move to different countries all the time for precisely that reason
With uniform government regulations we lose the ability to exercise our power as consumers.
I challenge you to name one current unregulated market, or one company with a complete monopoly that isn't created by government regulation.
I'll take the second one first. Microsoft. They have been convicted of abusing monopoly power in a court of law and Microsoft did not achieve its monopoly with help from government regulation.
If you want unregulated markets that's easy too. Illegal drugs. In fact any black market - counterfeits, prostitution, etc. Oh, there are laws but that doesn't make them regulated markets. There are plenty of small scale monopolies on local markets for the distribution of illegal narcotics. Try competing with drug traffickers and you are very likely to wind up dead. That sounds an awful lot like an unregulated market to me.
But why shouldn't the government provide internet access?
Government should only provide it if there is not economically feasible way for the private sector to do it. Economists call this market failure and it's not hard to come up with examples.
Internet access *is* infrastructure -- it is what we have governments for. The internet is like power, water, sewage, roads, and the post.
All of which are usually provided by private companies under government oversight. We only occasionally need the government to directly act. More often we just need government to provide regulation, oversight and sometimes funding. I agree that the internet is now vital infrastructure and that a certain amount of oversight in the public interest is desirable. The last thing we need is ISPs erecting unnecessary virtual toll booths to prioritize their own interests above yours and mine.
Either you trust the government : no choice of provider (that much, history should prove) Or you trust business : you can choose (for a little more money probably, yes, deal with it) a better provider, additionally you can build something yourself
Talk about false dichotomies. I don't trust either one and neither should you. I trust restrictions on each and a balance of power. We have separate branches of government because concentrating too much power in any one branch inevitably leads to abuse of power. We have government oversight of business to curb the inevitable excesses of corporate behavior. We allow corporations AND individuals to have a voice so that government does not abuse its power. We also have freedom of the press to keep both government and corporations (more) honest.
Both government and corporations can be a powerful force for good as well as evil in society. Laws and careful checks and balances are how we ensure that they both remain more on the good side than the bad.
Additionally your notion that there is always a choice with corporations simply isn't the case. I have precisely one choice of corporation when buying electricity, garbage disposal, natural gas, and mail delivery. I have precisely two choices for landline telecom services (a recent development from one) only one of which provides internet service to my address. Some businesses simply are natural monopolies and the only realistic way to keep them in check is through government oversight and regulation.
Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the Internet remain free from regulation?
Is that a rhetorical question? Because the internet ISN"T and WON'T remain free of regulation. In fact I can't really conceive of how you would have any sort of social activity on that scale without some form of regulation. The only actual question is what the regulations are going to be? I suggest they be regulations that favor end users and entrepreneurial activity rather than supporting large monopolistic networks. Since we are so fond of car analogies here, doing away with net neutrality is similar to having every road be a toll road. It can work in theory but it generates far less economic benefit to society as a whole.
Unregulated markets have a strong tendency to behave in ways that aren't in the interests of consumers. (see our current financial crisis if you need a timely example) The economics of delivery of internet service are very very similar to that for telephone service. Economies of scale matter greatly and there is a strong tendency towards natural monopoly as a result. Once an ISP has control over delivery, they effectively have a monopoly and can charge monopolistic prices. (this is already true in some cases) They also can stop competition completely if unregulated. Comcast for example owns a social networking site. It would be trivial for them to block or charge high prices to Facebook which competes with them. Without network neutrality I'm quite confident the internet as we know it would never have happened and certainly would be a far less dynamic and interesting place.
It's a differentiator, sure... but it's bupkis compared to practical, hands-on experience, and a candidate who rides on his or her sheepskin is less valuable than one who has none but shows initiative, curiosity, and drive.
Absolutely true but in some professions also absolutely irrelevant. Some professions simply will not hire you without the sheepskin. Medicine, finance, accounting, some branches of engineering, and quite a few more simply will not hire you unless you have the right set of certifications. I'm certified as an accountant myself. The certification itself doesn't make me a better or more knowledgeable accountant but without it I could not get hired or promoted to anything more than an entry level bookkeeper. It doesn't make a microscopic bit of difference how much I know without that certification because (almost) no company is going to take the chance on hiring me.
Possibly but that is debatable. Sun did have a lot of pretty useful assets. Not all of them profitable but I think that had to do more with Sun's particular business model than the parts of the business. IBM sells similar hardware and software profitably and Sun's software assets are valuable at minimum as strategic weapons. In the right hands these parts of the business could be quite valuable.
Sun was already only worth some 3 billions at the time.
By what measure? You are approximately right if you are only talking book value of assets. But no one values a company that way except in liquidation. Market cap? Unless the company is in even worse shape than Sun was the management won't sell without some premium over the stock's current value. Valuation is very inexact. You can't simply say a company is worth $X billions. It doesn't work that way. At best you can give a range and even then it depends on who the buyer is and what the circumstances surrounding the sale are. When finance geeks (and I am one) value a company they use several different methods (NPV, multiples of EBITDA or revenue, etc) and even then the valuations they get almost never match.
'Cause, you know, nothing says "the CEO deserves a big fat bonus" as driving the company in such a nose-dive where it lost 80% of its worth.
He might deserve a big bonus if the alternative was that the company would lose 100% of its value. I'm not convinced that is the case here but the circumstances matter. Sometimes saving a company from bankruptcy is positively heroic. Personally I think McNealy's team (it's never just the CEO who is responsible) screwed the company and Schwartz really never had much of a chance; the damage had already been done. I'm not sure anyone could have saved Sun as an independent company but Schwartz certainly wasn't the guy to do it. End of the day selling the company was probably the right move but they should have done it sooner.
Which strategy resulted in the drop in Sun share value by a factor of TEN TIMES between 2000 and end of 2003. (With an even deeper dip in 2001.)
Pretty much every tech company's stock tanked between 2000 and 2003 after the dotcom bubble burst. Amazon went from over $100/share down to less than $5. Ebay went from over $30 to around $8 (split adjusted). Even Microsoft lost about half its market cap in that period. Sun just had more exposure than most so they benefited more during the bubble and crashed harder afterward. Hard to compete with your own gear being sold on eBay for pennies on the dollar.
If there's nobody to breathe a pollutant before it degrades, it's not hurting anyone.
A great many pollutants never degrade. Many pollutants don't have to be inhaled or ingested in any way to cause real damage. Not all damage is direct biological damage.
Now, there's going to be all sorts of soot and sulfur released from that fuel because the regulations are so lax -- but who's it going to hurt in the middle of the Pacific's vast nutrient-devoid dead zones?
How about everyone? Perhaps you've heard of global warming? Acid rain? You don't have to be anywhere near the smokestack for it to have a real effect on your life.
The laws already existed. ISPF already defined which connection. BGP routing already defines what interface and route.
The laws quite clearly do NOT exist in sufficient form and the ones that do exist are in danger of being changed. If the situation were otherwise this debate would not exist. Many laws governing the internet have yet to be written. Technological standards do not carry the force of law and are easily subverted.
But Disney doesn't pay for MY connection, *I* pay for it.
??? That's a meaningless statement. It's like saying you pay for your driveway. True but the little piece of infrastructure you pay for is useless by itself. I'm an accountant and do cost accounting for a living. You pay for a tiny little section of the network whose utility depends on other people paying for other parts of the network and whose cost cannot be completely separated from the larger network. You do NOT pay for most of it directly and much of what do you pay is an indirect cost which cannot easily be tied to your specific usage by the people who carry your data packets. While it is theoretically possible to figure out an arrangement for who should pay for specific packets, in reality doing so would be so cost prohibitive that the internet as we know it wouldn't exist.
These laws were already in place when the internet took off.
There are laws but many remain well behind the state of technology and others are in danger of being changed to something not in my best interest. A great deal of the legislation that will govern the internet has yet to be written.
Same as any law. This doesn't stop law being written.
Point out where I said a law shouldn't be written. Oh that's right, I didn't say that. I'm pointing out that it is HARD, not that it shouldn't or couldn't be done. The GP post was under the delusion that ensuring network neutrality was easy ("easy peasy") and that by some miracle the carriers wouldn't attempt to subvert the status-quo to their own interests.
The fact that net neutrality de-facto exists today is no assurance at all that it will remain that way. The fight for it is a legislative one, not a technological one.
Over which connection? The 1000000 gigabit/nanosecond pipe for the paying content providers (Disney, etc) or the 14.4kbps modem for everyone else?
Over a 100GB/sec pipe, you can't ask for 300GB/sec so no hindrance in effect
You can ask - you just won't get it. It's called denial of service. You don't (normally) ask for speed, you ask for a volume of data. But if it comes over too slow a connection (intentional or not) you clog up the network like a highway at rush hour. Clever networks WILL intentionally route traffic they don't want over too congested a connection knowing that they can then shake down content owners and end users to fork over more dough for less freedom. It's not remotely difficult to intentionally under-invest in a network to keep it slower, especially when there is little/no competition.
Keep going? On what?
Plenty. If you are going to define how network providers are going to route traffic, you're going to have to get quite detailed about what that means. Doing this in a manner with no loopholes is REALLY hard. You're also going to have to define how it will be monitored, what will be monitored, what the consequences are for violating the rules, who is going to monitor it, and for how long and with what funds will the oversight be conducted with. Easy? I wish it were but it won't be. Net neutrality is important but keeping it is going to be quite a challenge.
Excuse me, but last time I checked the android market did NOT require me to enter my private information, much less my CREDIT CARD info just for going into the market or downloading free apps.
The phone company has your "private information" already, including your credit card. You provided it when you bought or activated the phone. Entering it a second time for iTunes is arguably redundant but by no means should you think you are anonymous with Android.
Android is overtaking all other mobile OSs for a reason.
That reason Android is doing well is that it's a pretty good OS and the other carriers and phone manufacturers need something to compete with the iPhone. The carriers aren't stupid - they aren't about to put all their eggs in Apple's basket. Most people don't even change their ringtone much less purchase developer's phones. Do you seriously believe that the ability to install an unlocked bootloader matters at all to 99.999999% of the users out there when they are deciding whether to purchase an iPhone?
We decide what apps you get and what apps you don't arbitrarily, and you have no part in that process.
They don't control this for one very simple reason. Users can always choose to not use an iPhone. If an application is needed/wanted that is not on an iPhone then don't use an iPhone. If you don't like Apple's policies then don't use an iPhone. If you think Steve Jobs is a whiny git and don't like black turtlenecks with jeans, then don't use an iPhone. There are plenty of other options out there. Pick one and enjoy it.
It seems to have eluded you that lots of bright and well informed people don't actually care about any of those things that seem to bother you so much. There are upsides to every one of those downsides you mentioned. Making administrative access available to most users is a serious security risk (see Microsoft Windows). Having a central body approving/rejecting apps also has the upside of keeping poor quality apps and malware off the machine. If you want to buy anything online you have to give personal information if you use a credit card. Having Apple as the only provider of apps also means that getting apps is a simpler process. If you can find a distribution channel for software with the reach of iTunes that costs less than 30% of revenue you should damn well take advantage of it. Etc, etc, etc.
Yes, all your points are legitimate criticisms of Apple and their products but you are only telling half the story. Look at the pros and cons and see if a given device makes sense for you. If you don't think the iPhone suits your particular needs/desires then buy something else and quit whining about it. I'm plenty smart enough to decide for myself whether I want to deal with Apple and AT&T. It's a contract we enter (or don't) willingly. It's only abuse if it's something we genuinely need and we have no alternatives or are misled somehow. You're assumption that all iPhone users are naive/stupid/abused simply is both arrogant and condescending.
If you ever try, there are very high chances that our countermeasures will work and your device will become useless. We won't help you.
Why would any company support software that they didn't write and which has the potential to cause them (and AT&T) real headaches and real costs? Would you seriously expect Microsoft to support linux? If you want to jailbreak you iPhone, go ahead. I've certainly got no problem with you doing so and actually think it's pretty cool. But expecting Apple to support your hacking is delusional.
No model in physics is "provably correct". That's not how the scientific process works. Scientific hypothesis and their resulting models can never be proven conclusively correct, they can only dis-proven. You can support a model with vast amounts of evidence and be quite confident that it is a useful and accurate model but it only takes a single piece of evidence to establish that the model is wrong. When we say something is a physical law we are basically saying we have a mathematical model for how this works and we've studied the hell out of it and every piece of evidence we've gathered so far supports the correctness of the model. That is NOT the same thing as saying we have proven this model to be correct - it is saying we have been unable to prove this model is wrong.
Of course we can also still use models that we know are less accurate (provably INcorrect) if they provide good approximations under known circumstances. We know relativity is a more accurate model of the physical world than Newtonian models for a great many problems. But the differences are negligible under many conditions and the relativistic models are much more mathematically cumbersome.
I find it a bit strange that you could find the whole Beatles canon uninteresting.
Why? Admittedly it is very much a matter of personal taste but there are plenty of very famous bands whose music I find to be quite boring. Sturgeon's Law applies to the Beetles too, even if you like their music. I don't dislike the Beetles, but I wouldn't pay to hear any of their music either. Same with those other bands/musicians I mentioned. I'm more than willing to concede that they are talented but that doesn't mean I should necessarily find their work interesting either. Michael Jordan was by any objective measure a great basketball player but I find the game of basketball boring and him along with it. Nothing personal to him, I just don't like the game. Same with the Beetles. Regardless of how talented they might be, their music just doesn't resonate with me like some other music does.
The fact that the Beetles did a lot of variety doesn't by itself make any of it good. (note that I'm not saying it is bad, merely that variety != quality) Most good musicians try a lot of different stuff over their careers but most of it remains unmemorable. Nothing wrong with that. I think it is great that they try new stuff but I also don't expect much of it to impress me. Really good music is kind of rare even for very talented musicians working with the genre where they are most gifted.
Sometimes bands become more popular than their talents as musicians really justifies because being an entertainer is about more than just the music. The Beetles were more a popular culture phenomenon than merely a band and their popularity at times had little to do with them producing amazing music. The stuff they played when they first became popular was often positively banal - "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is a godawful song in my opinion, especially for a title track, but those young ladies screaming on the Ed Sullivan show weren't screaming because the music was so good.
Just really not my kind of music, I generally have a very diverse taste but their music just doesn't grab me and make me want to listen to it.
I feel that way about the Beetles, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, and a number of other "legendary" bands. I don't hate their music but I don't find it particularly interesting either. The Beetles were and are quite the cultural phenomenon - I get that. I just think their music is rather overrated. Not bad but not amazing either. Personal taste to be sure but I'm pretty omnivorous in my music taste so it's not like I don't like the genre anything like that. I've heard a huge portion of their published music as well so it's not as if I'm unfamiliar with their work.
The IRS collects something like 70% of the taxes that corporations owe, while they collect 99% of the individual taxes owed.
The main problem isn't that the IRS doesn't collect what the businesses owe. The main problem is that companies have plenty of avenues available to reduce their actual tax bill. The problem really is that there are lots of tax loopholes, credits, and jurisdictional issues that let many companies greatly reduce their tax bill. Our statutory tax rates could be significantly reduced while simultaneously raising more tax revenue IF a lot of the special tax credits and other tax loopholes were closed. The recent proposal by the President's bipartisan deficit reduction committee takes advantage of exactly this fact.
A grossly oversimplified example. Say a generic manufacturing company has plants in both the US and China. Theoretically this US based company should pay taxes in the US on earnings but they might lower their tax bill by doing things like not repatriating their earnings - leaving the cash in China and reinvesting it there. Companies do this all the time. There's nothing legally wrong with it and arguably nothing immoral. But it does leave a lot of potential tax revenue on the table. This is just one example and large companies devote a huge amount of resources to reducing their tax bills because it is financially worth the effort.
If businesses want to be treated like real people, have rights like real people, vote and contribute like real people, then they need to pay taxes like real people.
I would argue that they DO pay taxes just like real people. They try to weasel out of paying them whenever possible.
I'm pretty sure you are a troll but eh, whatever...
Unfortunately, here in reality, the economics profession is a complete fucking failure of a joke.
It is called the dismal science for a reason. However that is mostly because it is REALLY hard to accurately model human behavior. People are unpredictable and do unpredictable things, both individually and in groups. If you can do better a Nobel prize awaits you.
Banks are run by dipshit morons propped up by criminal politicians.
Morons? No they aren't stupid. Greedy, selfish or arrogant I might go with but the guys who run banks are very very bright. I've met more than a few myself. Stupid is not a word that would come into the conversation.
Corporate accounting is a total fraud.
How so? I am a certified accountant who does corporate accounting for my day job so I'm more than passingly familiar with this capabilities and limitations of corporate accounting. It's certainly possible to have fraudulent corporate accounting (Enron, etc) but that hardly is evidence that corporate accounting as a whole is a "total fraud".
Ridiculous models conflate assets and technology and labor along with fiat currencies that have no real measurable value.
Do you have even the foggiest idea what the word asset means? Technology, labor and currency are BY DEFINITION assets. Anything tangible or intangible that can be owned or controlled to produce an economic benefit is an asset. Fiat currency's have measurable value and that value is measured every day. So long as people believe something has value, it does. Gold only has value because people believe it does. Same for any other resource.
The entire bullshit field is based on a fantasyland premise of perpetual growth in "utility" along with magical non-zero-sum mathematics at odds with even basic physics.
Glad you could distill the entire life's work of all those Nobel laureates. I'm sure they'll be happy you cleared up that they were wasting their time on a fruitless endeavor. You will of course be providing your own ever so insightful solution to all the worlds economic problems?... No? Oh, I get it. You're on a populist rant and don't have time to be slowed down by actual logic, facts or reason.
With regard to China, the result is exactly what one would expect when trading with a country with few natural resources and a billion consumers
"Few natural resources"? Are we talking about the same country? China has natural resources that rival the US available to it. They are rich in some and lack others, just like any other country. Their needs are immense and often outstrip their domestic production as one might expect with a country containing 1/6 of the world's population but China is hardly resource poor.
American labor has lost all value.
Really? Then how does the US still have the largest economy of any single country in the world?
This will not kill Boeing or Airbus. Unlike cheap crap that people buy off ebay, the commercial airplane market in the West is quite image sensitive and financially and managerially cautious. They are not going to switch fleets to cheaper Chinese aircraft just to save a few dollars.
The largest exporter in the US is Boeing. Most of their sales are outside the US. The commercial airline market is a global market, not regional.
Is a Chinese widebody jet an immediate threat to Boeing and Airbus? No - it will take quite some time to develop. Could it seriously hurt Boeing and Airbus in a huge future market? Absolutely. Does it introduce another potential serious competitor? You better believe it. Would airlines switch planes if there was an economic case for doing so? Hell yes - if there is enough financial advantage in doing so they will buy from anyone. Airlines are not terribly profitable businesses so any economic advantage they can realize will be taken advantage of.
Japanese products used to be regarded as cheap crap, even within my lifetime. They got better. Lots better. Chinese firms already are very capable at manufacturing and there is little reason to doubt that they can produce a competitive product if they decide to do so, especially with state support. Hell China has a very active space program now. Canada's Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer already have excellent products in the regional jet market. No reason China can't join the party too.
If you have to strip naked when you go to the doctor, there's something wrong and you should get another doctor.
That depends entirely on what the doctor is doing. A dermatologist might very well need to see every inch of you. If you have a surgery under general anesthesia, I can almost guarantee you are going to be naked on the operating table because the last thing you want while coding is a doctor trying to remove clothing instead of actually saving your life. If you are female and going to the OB/GYN, you are certainly going to be naked from the waist down. Same for a guy who gets a prostate exam.
Would you like to come up with another stupid sounds bite? Oh wait...
The US hasn't really had any significant experience of terrorism.... We didn't find it necessary to strip-search everyone who went into a hotel, or onto a train.
I'd like you to point out even a single example of anyone being strip searched to board a train or enter a hotel in the US. What exactly is your point?
Today while I was filling up my 2003 Corolla with gas, a guy drove up to the next pump in his 1952 MG convertible. Which gets 30MPG. My Corolla gets 27MPG.
So you are comparing a an MG that gets maybe 50HP, has a top speed of 77mph and does 0-60 in 18.2 seconds with a Corolla that even in its mildest trim gets 95HP which is at minimum roughly double the fuel economy per available horsepower. Could you come up with a slightly worse comparison? Maybe a Prius to an M1 Abrams Tank? It is perfectly possible and even easy to find cars using modern technology to get much higher MPG. However there are other issues to consider because MPG isn't the only consideration. Safety, reliability, comfort, entertainment, intended use and other features are all trade offs engineers need to make to satisfy both legal and customer requirements. There are very good reasons we don't make cars like a '52 MG anymore.
This reminds me of the stupid comparisons of the cost of a gallon of diesel fuel with a gallon of gasoline. Diesel has about 20% more energy per unit of volume so PER UNIT OF HORSEPOWER, diesel is more efficient under many (though not all) circumstances. Simply saying diesel is more expensive per gallon really tells you nothing. The useful comparison is cost per unit of horsepower, i.e., how much power was generated per dollar. Grossly simplified, at the current prices near me diesel would have to be over $0.60/gallon more expensive to make gasoline a better deal per unit of horsepower for a typical automobile.
You're confusing comparative advantage (and business in general) with arbitrage.
No I'm quite familiar with both and not confusing anything, but thanks for presuming slept through all the graduate finance courses I took and got my certification as an accountant out of a cracker jack box.
Comparative advantage has to do with profits derived from differing opportunity costs. What I'm talking about is that for anything to be sold at a profit, you have conditions where you can buy low and sell high. To do this you buy in one market and sell into another at a profit - basically arbitrage but not the academic deterministic version. In a sense (you missed that "in a sense" bit in my previous post) it's a bit like the anthropic principle - we know there was an profitable arbitrage opportunity because the conditions existed for a profit to be made.
No I'm NOT claiming that all business is actually a risk free arbitrage opportunity. I'm stating that statistical arbitrage is an interesting way to look at profit seeking when applied a bit more generally than is the norm.
Arbitrage, statistical or otherwise, almost never involves taking delivery of goods. Further, arbitrage rarely involves holding a position for more than a couple days.
Only in academic models and only if you use the classical definition of arbitrage. You will note I said STATISTICAL arbitrage which only requires the expectation of profits and really can only be proven with an infinite timespan and an infinite bankroll. In the real world it suffers from model weakness, short term risk factors and a host of other problems - just like any real world business.
Businesses in your example introduce value, by taking care of shipping the products to/from the place of production to the place of sale.
Businesses DO introduce value by by shipping products where they are needed. They are exploiting the difference is value between two markets by doing so. That is by definition arbitrage.
It's not statistical arbitrage at all, which alone creates no value, only number games.
Sure it is - you just have to think about it in a slightly larger context. Statistical arbitrage occurs whenever there is a mispricing of price relationships that are true in expectation. In other words, you produce a good or service and ship it to market because you have an expectation of exploiting a difference in pricing. In the short term (just as with statistical arbitrage) events can occur that can introduce heavy short term losses. You also have to allow for the fact that people are imperfect and most decisions are made with imperfect information.
Oh, and arbitrage (statistical or otherwise) DOES often create value. It forces price convergence which in turn reduces price discrimination. This isn't always worth the costs but arbitrage does demonstrably have real value in the real world.
There is no economic point in buying/selling a product in a factory without it ever leaving the factory.
Result - trading moves to another exchange where this is not required. Your solutions depend on international cooperation between government and exchanges, all of which compete with each other. Good freaking luck getting policies like that instituted.
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The monopoly created by your friendly government? Even in those areas you still usually have more than one choice.
A monopoly BY DEFINITION means you have only a single choice of where to buy a product. If you have a few choices that is called an oligopoly. If you have only one customer that is called monopsony.
And even if you only have one choice you can still boycott, or vote with your feet and move.
Move where? From one town with a single provider of electricity to another town with a single provider of electricity? Wow. Great choice! [/sarcasm]
Neither of those options is available with the federal government.
You've never heard of immigration apparently... People move to different countries all the time for precisely that reason
With uniform government regulations we lose the ability to exercise our power as consumers.
Exactly when did we lose the right to vote?
I challenge you to name one current unregulated market, or one company with a complete monopoly that isn't created by government regulation.
I'll take the second one first. Microsoft. They have been convicted of abusing monopoly power in a court of law and Microsoft did not achieve its monopoly with help from government regulation.
If you want unregulated markets that's easy too. Illegal drugs. In fact any black market - counterfeits, prostitution, etc. Oh, there are laws but that doesn't make them regulated markets. There are plenty of small scale monopolies on local markets for the distribution of illegal narcotics. Try competing with drug traffickers and you are very likely to wind up dead. That sounds an awful lot like an unregulated market to me.
But why shouldn't the government provide internet access?
Government should only provide it if there is not economically feasible way for the private sector to do it. Economists call this market failure and it's not hard to come up with examples.
Internet access *is* infrastructure -- it is what we have governments for. The internet is like power, water, sewage, roads, and the post.
All of which are usually provided by private companies under government oversight. We only occasionally need the government to directly act. More often we just need government to provide regulation, oversight and sometimes funding. I agree that the internet is now vital infrastructure and that a certain amount of oversight in the public interest is desirable. The last thing we need is ISPs erecting unnecessary virtual toll booths to prioritize their own interests above yours and mine.
Either you trust the government : no choice of provider (that much, history should prove)
Or you trust business : you can choose (for a little more money probably, yes, deal with it) a better provider, additionally you can build something yourself
Talk about false dichotomies. I don't trust either one and neither should you. I trust restrictions on each and a balance of power. We have separate branches of government because concentrating too much power in any one branch inevitably leads to abuse of power. We have government oversight of business to curb the inevitable excesses of corporate behavior. We allow corporations AND individuals to have a voice so that government does not abuse its power. We also have freedom of the press to keep both government and corporations (more) honest.
Both government and corporations can be a powerful force for good as well as evil in society. Laws and careful checks and balances are how we ensure that they both remain more on the good side than the bad.
Additionally your notion that there is always a choice with corporations simply isn't the case. I have precisely one choice of corporation when buying electricity, garbage disposal, natural gas, and mail delivery. I have precisely two choices for landline telecom services (a recent development from one) only one of which provides internet service to my address. Some businesses simply are natural monopolies and the only realistic way to keep them in check is through government oversight and regulation.
Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the Internet remain free from regulation?
Is that a rhetorical question? Because the internet ISN"T and WON'T remain free of regulation. In fact I can't really conceive of how you would have any sort of social activity on that scale without some form of regulation. The only actual question is what the regulations are going to be? I suggest they be regulations that favor end users and entrepreneurial activity rather than supporting large monopolistic networks. Since we are so fond of car analogies here, doing away with net neutrality is similar to having every road be a toll road. It can work in theory but it generates far less economic benefit to society as a whole.
Unregulated markets have a strong tendency to behave in ways that aren't in the interests of consumers. (see our current financial crisis if you need a timely example) The economics of delivery of internet service are very very similar to that for telephone service. Economies of scale matter greatly and there is a strong tendency towards natural monopoly as a result. Once an ISP has control over delivery, they effectively have a monopoly and can charge monopolistic prices. (this is already true in some cases) They also can stop competition completely if unregulated. Comcast for example owns a social networking site. It would be trivial for them to block or charge high prices to Facebook which competes with them. Without network neutrality I'm quite confident the internet as we know it would never have happened and certainly would be a far less dynamic and interesting place.
It's a differentiator, sure... but it's bupkis compared to practical, hands-on experience, and a candidate who rides on his or her sheepskin is less valuable than one who has none but shows initiative, curiosity, and drive.
Absolutely true but in some professions also absolutely irrelevant. Some professions simply will not hire you without the sheepskin. Medicine, finance, accounting, some branches of engineering, and quite a few more simply will not hire you unless you have the right set of certifications. I'm certified as an accountant myself. The certification itself doesn't make me a better or more knowledgeable accountant but without it I could not get hired or promoted to anything more than an entry level bookkeeper. It doesn't make a microscopic bit of difference how much I know without that certification because (almost) no company is going to take the chance on hiring me.
Oracle paid too much:
Possibly but that is debatable. Sun did have a lot of pretty useful assets. Not all of them profitable but I think that had to do more with Sun's particular business model than the parts of the business. IBM sells similar hardware and software profitably and Sun's software assets are valuable at minimum as strategic weapons. In the right hands these parts of the business could be quite valuable.
Sun was already only worth some 3 billions at the time.
By what measure? You are approximately right if you are only talking book value of assets. But no one values a company that way except in liquidation. Market cap? Unless the company is in even worse shape than Sun was the management won't sell without some premium over the stock's current value. Valuation is very inexact. You can't simply say a company is worth $X billions. It doesn't work that way. At best you can give a range and even then it depends on who the buyer is and what the circumstances surrounding the sale are. When finance geeks (and I am one) value a company they use several different methods (NPV, multiples of EBITDA or revenue, etc) and even then the valuations they get almost never match.
'Cause, you know, nothing says "the CEO deserves a big fat bonus" as driving the company in such a nose-dive where it lost 80% of its worth.
He might deserve a big bonus if the alternative was that the company would lose 100% of its value. I'm not convinced that is the case here but the circumstances matter. Sometimes saving a company from bankruptcy is positively heroic. Personally I think McNealy's team (it's never just the CEO who is responsible) screwed the company and Schwartz really never had much of a chance; the damage had already been done. I'm not sure anyone could have saved Sun as an independent company but Schwartz certainly wasn't the guy to do it. End of the day selling the company was probably the right move but they should have done it sooner.
Which strategy resulted in the drop in Sun share value by a factor of TEN TIMES between 2000 and end of 2003. (With an even deeper dip in 2001.)
Pretty much every tech company's stock tanked between 2000 and 2003 after the dotcom bubble burst. Amazon went from over $100/share down to less than $5. Ebay went from over $30 to around $8 (split adjusted). Even Microsoft lost about half its market cap in that period. Sun just had more exposure than most so they benefited more during the bubble and crashed harder afterward. Hard to compete with your own gear being sold on eBay for pennies on the dollar.
Without a formula, you CAN'T do integration, and must rely on a numerical technique. What he's 'invented' here is the trapezoidal rule.
You are aware that the trapezoidal rule is simply an approximation technique for a definite integral, right? QED it is integration via a numerical technique.
If there's nobody to breathe a pollutant before it degrades, it's not hurting anyone.
A great many pollutants never degrade. Many pollutants don't have to be inhaled or ingested in any way to cause real damage. Not all damage is direct biological damage.
Now, there's going to be all sorts of soot and sulfur released from that fuel because the regulations are so lax -- but who's it going to hurt in the middle of the Pacific's vast nutrient-devoid dead zones?
How about everyone? Perhaps you've heard of global warming? Acid rain? You don't have to be anywhere near the smokestack for it to have a real effect on your life.
The laws already existed. ISPF already defined which connection. BGP routing already defines what interface and route.
The laws quite clearly do NOT exist in sufficient form and the ones that do exist are in danger of being changed. If the situation were otherwise this debate would not exist. Many laws governing the internet have yet to be written. Technological standards do not carry the force of law and are easily subverted.
But Disney doesn't pay for MY connection, *I* pay for it.
??? That's a meaningless statement. It's like saying you pay for your driveway. True but the little piece of infrastructure you pay for is useless by itself. I'm an accountant and do cost accounting for a living. You pay for a tiny little section of the network whose utility depends on other people paying for other parts of the network and whose cost cannot be completely separated from the larger network. You do NOT pay for most of it directly and much of what do you pay is an indirect cost which cannot easily be tied to your specific usage by the people who carry your data packets. While it is theoretically possible to figure out an arrangement for who should pay for specific packets, in reality doing so would be so cost prohibitive that the internet as we know it wouldn't exist.
These laws were already in place when the internet took off.
There are laws but many remain well behind the state of technology and others are in danger of being changed to something not in my best interest. A great deal of the legislation that will govern the internet has yet to be written.
Same as any law. This doesn't stop law being written.
Point out where I said a law shouldn't be written. Oh that's right, I didn't say that. I'm pointing out that it is HARD, not that it shouldn't or couldn't be done. The GP post was under the delusion that ensuring network neutrality was easy ("easy peasy") and that by some miracle the carriers wouldn't attempt to subvert the status-quo to their own interests.
The fact that net neutrality de-facto exists today is no assurance at all that it will remain that way. The fight for it is a legislative one, not a technological one.
when you get a packet, move it on when you can.
Over which connection? The 1000000 gigabit/nanosecond pipe for the paying content providers (Disney, etc) or the 14.4kbps modem for everyone else?
Over a 100GB/sec pipe, you can't ask for 300GB/sec so no hindrance in effect
You can ask - you just won't get it. It's called denial of service. You don't (normally) ask for speed, you ask for a volume of data. But if it comes over too slow a connection (intentional or not) you clog up the network like a highway at rush hour. Clever networks WILL intentionally route traffic they don't want over too congested a connection knowing that they can then shake down content owners and end users to fork over more dough for less freedom. It's not remotely difficult to intentionally under-invest in a network to keep it slower, especially when there is little/no competition.
Keep going? On what?
Plenty. If you are going to define how network providers are going to route traffic, you're going to have to get quite detailed about what that means. Doing this in a manner with no loopholes is REALLY hard. You're also going to have to define how it will be monitored, what will be monitored, what the consequences are for violating the rules, who is going to monitor it, and for how long and with what funds will the oversight be conducted with. Easy? I wish it were but it won't be. Net neutrality is important but keeping it is going to be quite a challenge.
Excuse me, but last time I checked the android market did NOT require me to enter my private information, much less my CREDIT CARD info just for going into the market or downloading free apps.
The phone company has your "private information" already, including your credit card. You provided it when you bought or activated the phone. Entering it a second time for iTunes is arguably redundant but by no means should you think you are anonymous with Android.
Android is overtaking all other mobile OSs for a reason.
That reason Android is doing well is that it's a pretty good OS and the other carriers and phone manufacturers need something to compete with the iPhone. The carriers aren't stupid - they aren't about to put all their eggs in Apple's basket. Most people don't even change their ringtone much less purchase developer's phones. Do you seriously believe that the ability to install an unlocked bootloader matters at all to 99.999999% of the users out there when they are deciding whether to purchase an iPhone?
We decide what apps you get and what apps you don't arbitrarily, and you have no part in that process.
They don't control this for one very simple reason. Users can always choose to not use an iPhone. If an application is needed/wanted that is not on an iPhone then don't use an iPhone. If you don't like Apple's policies then don't use an iPhone. If you think Steve Jobs is a whiny git and don't like black turtlenecks with jeans, then don't use an iPhone. There are plenty of other options out there. Pick one and enjoy it.
It seems to have eluded you that lots of bright and well informed people don't actually care about any of those things that seem to bother you so much. There are upsides to every one of those downsides you mentioned. Making administrative access available to most users is a serious security risk (see Microsoft Windows). Having a central body approving/rejecting apps also has the upside of keeping poor quality apps and malware off the machine. If you want to buy anything online you have to give personal information if you use a credit card. Having Apple as the only provider of apps also means that getting apps is a simpler process. If you can find a distribution channel for software with the reach of iTunes that costs less than 30% of revenue you should damn well take advantage of it. Etc, etc, etc.
Yes, all your points are legitimate criticisms of Apple and their products but you are only telling half the story. Look at the pros and cons and see if a given device makes sense for you. If you don't think the iPhone suits your particular needs/desires then buy something else and quit whining about it. I'm plenty smart enough to decide for myself whether I want to deal with Apple and AT&T. It's a contract we enter (or don't) willingly. It's only abuse if it's something we genuinely need and we have no alternatives or are misled somehow. You're assumption that all iPhone users are naive/stupid/abused simply is both arrogant and condescending.
If you ever try, there are very high chances that our countermeasures will work and your device will become useless. We won't help you.
Why would any company support software that they didn't write and which has the potential to cause them (and AT&T) real headaches and real costs? Would you seriously expect Microsoft to support linux? If you want to jailbreak you iPhone, go ahead. I've certainly got no problem with you doing so and actually think it's pretty cool. But expecting Apple to support your hacking is delusional.
It's provable correct.
No model in physics is "provably correct". That's not how the scientific process works. Scientific hypothesis and their resulting models can never be proven conclusively correct, they can only dis-proven. You can support a model with vast amounts of evidence and be quite confident that it is a useful and accurate model but it only takes a single piece of evidence to establish that the model is wrong. When we say something is a physical law we are basically saying we have a mathematical model for how this works and we've studied the hell out of it and every piece of evidence we've gathered so far supports the correctness of the model. That is NOT the same thing as saying we have proven this model to be correct - it is saying we have been unable to prove this model is wrong.
Of course we can also still use models that we know are less accurate (provably INcorrect) if they provide good approximations under known circumstances. We know relativity is a more accurate model of the physical world than Newtonian models for a great many problems. But the differences are negligible under many conditions and the relativistic models are much more mathematically cumbersome.
I find it a bit strange that you could find the whole Beatles canon uninteresting.
Why? Admittedly it is very much a matter of personal taste but there are plenty of very famous bands whose music I find to be quite boring. Sturgeon's Law applies to the Beetles too, even if you like their music. I don't dislike the Beetles, but I wouldn't pay to hear any of their music either. Same with those other bands/musicians I mentioned. I'm more than willing to concede that they are talented but that doesn't mean I should necessarily find their work interesting either. Michael Jordan was by any objective measure a great basketball player but I find the game of basketball boring and him along with it. Nothing personal to him, I just don't like the game. Same with the Beetles. Regardless of how talented they might be, their music just doesn't resonate with me like some other music does.
The fact that the Beetles did a lot of variety doesn't by itself make any of it good. (note that I'm not saying it is bad, merely that variety != quality) Most good musicians try a lot of different stuff over their careers but most of it remains unmemorable. Nothing wrong with that. I think it is great that they try new stuff but I also don't expect much of it to impress me. Really good music is kind of rare even for very talented musicians working with the genre where they are most gifted.
Sometimes bands become more popular than their talents as musicians really justifies because being an entertainer is about more than just the music. The Beetles were more a popular culture phenomenon than merely a band and their popularity at times had little to do with them producing amazing music. The stuff they played when they first became popular was often positively banal - "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is a godawful song in my opinion, especially for a title track, but those young ladies screaming on the Ed Sullivan show weren't screaming because the music was so good.
Just really not my kind of music, I generally have a very diverse taste but their music just doesn't grab me and make me want to listen to it.
I feel that way about the Beetles, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, and a number of other "legendary" bands. I don't hate their music but I don't find it particularly interesting either. The Beetles were and are quite the cultural phenomenon - I get that. I just think their music is rather overrated. Not bad but not amazing either. Personal taste to be sure but I'm pretty omnivorous in my music taste so it's not like I don't like the genre anything like that. I've heard a huge portion of their published music as well so it's not as if I'm unfamiliar with their work.
The IRS collects something like 70% of the taxes that corporations owe, while they collect 99% of the individual taxes owed.
The main problem isn't that the IRS doesn't collect what the businesses owe. The main problem is that companies have plenty of avenues available to reduce their actual tax bill. The problem really is that there are lots of tax loopholes, credits, and jurisdictional issues that let many companies greatly reduce their tax bill. Our statutory tax rates could be significantly reduced while simultaneously raising more tax revenue IF a lot of the special tax credits and other tax loopholes were closed. The recent proposal by the President's bipartisan deficit reduction committee takes advantage of exactly this fact.
A grossly oversimplified example. Say a generic manufacturing company has plants in both the US and China. Theoretically this US based company should pay taxes in the US on earnings but they might lower their tax bill by doing things like not repatriating their earnings - leaving the cash in China and reinvesting it there. Companies do this all the time. There's nothing legally wrong with it and arguably nothing immoral. But it does leave a lot of potential tax revenue on the table. This is just one example and large companies devote a huge amount of resources to reducing their tax bills because it is financially worth the effort.
If businesses want to be treated like real people, have rights like real people, vote and contribute like real people, then they need to pay taxes like real people.
I would argue that they DO pay taxes just like real people. They try to weasel out of paying them whenever possible.
I'm pretty sure you are a troll but eh, whatever...
Unfortunately, here in reality, the economics profession is a complete fucking failure of a joke.
It is called the dismal science for a reason. However that is mostly because it is REALLY hard to accurately model human behavior. People are unpredictable and do unpredictable things, both individually and in groups. If you can do better a Nobel prize awaits you.
Banks are run by dipshit morons propped up by criminal politicians.
Morons? No they aren't stupid. Greedy, selfish or arrogant I might go with but the guys who run banks are very very bright. I've met more than a few myself. Stupid is not a word that would come into the conversation.
Corporate accounting is a total fraud.
How so? I am a certified accountant who does corporate accounting for my day job so I'm more than passingly familiar with this capabilities and limitations of corporate accounting. It's certainly possible to have fraudulent corporate accounting (Enron, etc) but that hardly is evidence that corporate accounting as a whole is a "total fraud".
Ridiculous models conflate assets and technology and labor along with fiat currencies that have no real measurable value.
Do you have even the foggiest idea what the word asset means? Technology, labor and currency are BY DEFINITION assets. Anything tangible or intangible that can be owned or controlled to produce an economic benefit is an asset. Fiat currency's have measurable value and that value is measured every day. So long as people believe something has value, it does. Gold only has value because people believe it does. Same for any other resource.
The entire bullshit field is based on a fantasyland premise of perpetual growth in "utility" along with magical non-zero-sum mathematics at odds with even basic physics.
Glad you could distill the entire life's work of all those Nobel laureates. I'm sure they'll be happy you cleared up that they were wasting their time on a fruitless endeavor. You will of course be providing your own ever so insightful solution to all the worlds economic problems? ... No? Oh, I get it. You're on a populist rant and don't have time to be slowed down by actual logic, facts or reason.
With regard to China, the result is exactly what one would expect when trading with a country with few natural resources and a billion consumers
"Few natural resources"? Are we talking about the same country? China has natural resources that rival the US available to it. They are rich in some and lack others, just like any other country. Their needs are immense and often outstrip their domestic production as one might expect with a country containing 1/6 of the world's population but China is hardly resource poor.
American labor has lost all value.
Really? Then how does the US still have the largest economy of any single country in the world?
Most of their sales are outside the US.
Self correction. About half come from exports. Boeing by itself is about 1.5% of US exports.
The market for jet engines is dominated by Rolls-Royce.
I think General Electric and Pratt & Whitney will be very surprised to hear that.
This will not kill Boeing or Airbus. Unlike cheap crap that people buy off ebay, the commercial airplane market in the West is quite image sensitive and financially and managerially cautious. They are not going to switch fleets to cheaper Chinese aircraft just to save a few dollars.
The largest exporter in the US is Boeing. Most of their sales are outside the US. The commercial airline market is a global market, not regional.
Is a Chinese widebody jet an immediate threat to Boeing and Airbus? No - it will take quite some time to develop. Could it seriously hurt Boeing and Airbus in a huge future market? Absolutely. Does it introduce another potential serious competitor? You better believe it. Would airlines switch planes if there was an economic case for doing so? Hell yes - if there is enough financial advantage in doing so they will buy from anyone. Airlines are not terribly profitable businesses so any economic advantage they can realize will be taken advantage of.
Japanese products used to be regarded as cheap crap, even within my lifetime. They got better. Lots better. Chinese firms already are very capable at manufacturing and there is little reason to doubt that they can produce a competitive product if they decide to do so, especially with state support. Hell China has a very active space program now. Canada's Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer already have excellent products in the regional jet market. No reason China can't join the party too.
If you have to strip naked when you go to the doctor, there's something wrong and you should get another doctor.
That depends entirely on what the doctor is doing. A dermatologist might very well need to see every inch of you. If you have a surgery under general anesthesia, I can almost guarantee you are going to be naked on the operating table because the last thing you want while coding is a doctor trying to remove clothing instead of actually saving your life. If you are female and going to the OB/GYN, you are certainly going to be naked from the waist down. Same for a guy who gets a prostate exam.
Would you like to come up with another stupid sounds bite? Oh wait...
The US hasn't really had any significant experience of terrorism. ... We didn't find it necessary to strip-search everyone who went into a hotel, or onto a train.
I'd like you to point out even a single example of anyone being strip searched to board a train or enter a hotel in the US. What exactly is your point?
Today while I was filling up my 2003 Corolla with gas, a guy drove up to the next pump in his 1952 MG convertible. Which gets 30MPG. My Corolla gets 27MPG.
So you are comparing a an MG that gets maybe 50HP, has a top speed of 77mph and does 0-60 in 18.2 seconds with a Corolla that even in its mildest trim gets 95HP which is at minimum roughly double the fuel economy per available horsepower. Could you come up with a slightly worse comparison? Maybe a Prius to an M1 Abrams Tank? It is perfectly possible and even easy to find cars using modern technology to get much higher MPG. However there are other issues to consider because MPG isn't the only consideration. Safety, reliability, comfort, entertainment, intended use and other features are all trade offs engineers need to make to satisfy both legal and customer requirements. There are very good reasons we don't make cars like a '52 MG anymore.
This reminds me of the stupid comparisons of the cost of a gallon of diesel fuel with a gallon of gasoline. Diesel has about 20% more energy per unit of volume so PER UNIT OF HORSEPOWER, diesel is more efficient under many (though not all) circumstances. Simply saying diesel is more expensive per gallon really tells you nothing. The useful comparison is cost per unit of horsepower, i.e., how much power was generated per dollar. Grossly simplified, at the current prices near me diesel would have to be over $0.60/gallon more expensive to make gasoline a better deal per unit of horsepower for a typical automobile.
You're confusing comparative advantage (and business in general) with arbitrage.
No I'm quite familiar with both and not confusing anything, but thanks for presuming slept through all the graduate finance courses I took and got my certification as an accountant out of a cracker jack box.
Comparative advantage has to do with profits derived from differing opportunity costs. What I'm talking about is that for anything to be sold at a profit, you have conditions where you can buy low and sell high. To do this you buy in one market and sell into another at a profit - basically arbitrage but not the academic deterministic version. In a sense (you missed that "in a sense" bit in my previous post) it's a bit like the anthropic principle - we know there was an profitable arbitrage opportunity because the conditions existed for a profit to be made.
No I'm NOT claiming that all business is actually a risk free arbitrage opportunity. I'm stating that statistical arbitrage is an interesting way to look at profit seeking when applied a bit more generally than is the norm.
Arbitrage, statistical or otherwise, almost never involves taking delivery of goods.
Further, arbitrage rarely involves holding a position for more than a couple days.
Only in academic models and only if you use the classical definition of arbitrage. You will note I said STATISTICAL arbitrage which only requires the expectation of profits and really can only be proven with an infinite timespan and an infinite bankroll. In the real world it suffers from model weakness, short term risk factors and a host of other problems - just like any real world business.
Businesses in your example introduce value, by taking care of shipping the products to/from the place of production to the place of sale.
Businesses DO introduce value by by shipping products where they are needed. They are exploiting the difference is value between two markets by doing so. That is by definition arbitrage.
It's not statistical arbitrage at all, which alone creates no value, only number games.
Sure it is - you just have to think about it in a slightly larger context. Statistical arbitrage occurs whenever there is a mispricing of price relationships that are true in expectation. In other words, you produce a good or service and ship it to market because you have an expectation of exploiting a difference in pricing. In the short term (just as with statistical arbitrage) events can occur that can introduce heavy short term losses. You also have to allow for the fact that people are imperfect and most decisions are made with imperfect information.
Oh, and arbitrage (statistical or otherwise) DOES often create value. It forces price convergence which in turn reduces price discrimination. This isn't always worth the costs but arbitrage does demonstrably have real value in the real world.
There is no economic point in buying/selling a product in a factory without it ever leaving the factory.
True but irrelevant to my point.
A) Require 1/2 hour averaging for all trades.
B) Tax all automated computer trades at 1%.
Result - trading moves to another exchange where this is not required. Your solutions depend on international cooperation between government and exchanges, all of which compete with each other. Good freaking luck getting policies like that instituted.