I'm not 100% positive on this, but I do know that many European countries have extremely high gas taxes to discourage people from using fossil-fuels. Some of it may be environmentally-driven, elsewhere it's because Europe has very little in the way of oil reserves and some mercantilism-based philosophies are still prevalent in various governments. So, as the other poster said, I wouldn't be surprised if it's because of import tariffs on fuel combustion vehicles.
I don't think the.com bubble really ended in the early 2000's. The Internet makes it very easy to create something of value with very little invested capital, and so you get lots of experimenting. This has created lots of different "micro-bubbles" and experiments, many of them obviously fail. But then, most off-line businesses fail too. There's also tons of followers everywhere. As soon as one idea catches on you get thousands of clones. Only the best ones survive.
I've been self-employed for over 5 years now. The key to making money online is no different than off-line. You have to offer something that's, you know, valuable. I run ad-supported web-sites and while lots of other sites have gone out of business my sites have actually increased in popularity. I'm not making millions but I passed the 5 year mark and are seeing slow but sustained growth. My biggest, most successful endeavours are ones that were started back in 2004. That's because I think long-term, and aren't in it to make a quick buck. They've only seen sustained growth in daily traffic since their inception. Even in the current "economic crisis", I'm making more than I was the year before. This is because I do my best to out-compete others who offer similar services. I listen to my surfers and respond to their demands. They visit my sites because the alternatives don't provide the same level of satisfaction. I make money entirely through advertising and have only seen business increase by following very simple, elementary business practices. Like don't expect something for nothing; respond to customer feedback; provide something that others find useful. You know. Common sense.
I have two daughters in school in Canada. We like to believe that our school system is better, and maybe it is a little bit (at least it's run by the Provinces and we don't have anything similar to the Department of Education), but what strikes me is the amount of Canadian nationalist propaganda that gets shoved down the students throats. Every school assembly that my daughters participate in (that we attend), they are constantly singing songs about how great Canada is, waving the flag etc. At a remembrance day ceremony they had children in military dress march the Canadian flag. Every morning kids stand to sing "Oh Canada!" and by law every school has to show the Canadian flag.
I know there is nothing unusual about this. The USA does it too, and at least we don't require our students to take a pledge of allegiance. So I don't want to blow this out of proportion. I will pick Canada over communist China any day. But that kind of nationalist indoctrination is something that I would think is more suited to a communist / nationalist country. So put fascist corporatism aside for just a second. I think the schools try to indoctrinate their students with a massive dose of national pride and patriotism in order to have a citizenry that is more forgiving of the government and will not get angry, protest, disobey and generally cause trouble for those in power.
I'm not a pacifist, nor am I endorsing any particular ideal or philosophy. But to offer an alternative Gandhi threw the English out of India using entirely non-violent means. It's worth reading about satyagraha if you genuinely believe in peaceful means before violence and fear the day when you may have to be part of a resistance.
I hate to reply to myself but this one point was worded very poorly and I need to clarify:
"Only racing and antique enthusiasts will continue to spend money on fuel combustion vehicles and even they will drive something else on a day to day basis since fossil fuel (and now fuel combustion vehicles, since no one is buying them) is so expensive."
If no one is buying fuel efficient vehicles, the costs of current vehicles will plummet to near-nothingness. Yet once those vehicles are sold to enthusiasts and the rest sent to the junk yard for scraps very few new fuel combustion vehicles will be produced. Limited supply will keep their prices very high.
"Fundamentally I understand your point - if everyone has a straw sucking up the oil fields, then they will dry up much faster."
I don't see that as a problem.
If and when the supply of oil dries up, gas prices will get high enough that people will do some very basic accounting in their heads and come to the conclusion that the cost of driving is no longer in line with their subjective valuations as to what driving is "worth".
Monetary prices are a reflection of subjective use-value. They are the only invention that humans have ever developed to measure subjective use-value. Everybody knows the theory of supply vs. demand. Yet people seem to forget the simple fact when talking about environmental causes.
If oil dries up to the point where the costs of driving exceed what people value driving at, then prices will reach a point where cheap, fuel efficient vehicles are worth more than expensive gas guzzlers (we already saw that in action during the spring/summer of 2008 when gas prices soared to record numbers) and companies will invest more in fuel efficient vehicles to meet the increased demand, which will lower their prices. Having fewer people driving and having a greater ratio of fuel efficient vehicles on the road will create less demand for fossil fuel and will help to keep it's price down, though it will still rise at a slower rate since we are still depleting the supply. As time goes on and gas prices continue to rise, vehicles using alternative energy will start to look more affordable. Increased demand for those vehicles will prompt more investment by entrepreneurs into those markets, new and better technologies in that area will be developed, the supply of those vehicles will be increased to meet demand and prices will come down. Only racing and antique enthusiasts will continue to spend money on fuel combustion vehicles and even they will drive something else on a day to day basis since fossil fuel (and now fuel combustion vehicles, since no one is buying them) is so expensive.
If it turns out that we simply do not possess any possible means of developing an affordable vehicle that does not consume fossil fuel (I *highly* doubt that, but let's assume that it turns out to be the case), then people will simply stop driving. If people can't afford to drive they will have no choice. Pure and simple. We don't need any kind of intervention to get companies to invest in "green" technologies. If we are at risk of consuming all of our fossil fuel then simple economics will take care of the problem naturally.
Heck, going along even further with this argument, it may actually be favourable for the "green cause" in the long run if India and China starts driving fuel combustion vehicles en masse. Since increased demand for fossil fuel will raise gas prices and cause people to switch to greener vehicles faster:)
People are not going spend money on something that they do not feel enriches their lives.
So if you are correct, that Indian families do not need cars and that their money will be better spent on other things, then the majority of Indian families will not go out and buy a vehicle and the companies that are investing money in satisfying a market that doesn't exist will go out of business.
That's the beauty of the market economy. People vote with their wallets and thus determine where investments are made that improve the lives of the majority of people. A company can not stay in business if it does not produce something that enriches the lives of a great number of people (*cough* unless they can persuade the government to give them public money *cough*:p ). We can talk for days on end about the harmful side-effects of certain products (pollution and health), but in the end people will always put their money into areas that they feel make their lives better.
All human action is a means to an end. To relieve felt uneasiness. From the day human had to escape being eaten by a lion to the day we created a vaccine for small pox we have been trying to increase our chances for survival. It is very easy to argue that you and your ancestors owe your very existence to that innate behaviour.
"if you've ever unplugged from the cloud for a significant length of time you'll notice that technology really isn't that important to our lives, we just think it is because we're immersed in it."
A lot of what we use on a day to day basis isn't "necessary", but you can argue that those "creature comforts" (as one of the characters put it) have made us better equipped to spend our resources developing technology that has a more profound impact on our survival.
All technology has been developed to improve our conditions. We are "programmed" to do that. That's how humanity evolved, by forming social groups, dividing labour amongst us and developing goods and techniques of producing goods that make our day-to-day lives easier. Increasing our chances for survival.
The argument that we "long ago reached a point where we started developing only creature comforts that are not necessary for humanity's survival" was being made hundreds of years ago. Karl Marx implied that in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. Yet when we think of the medical conditions that we have cured since then (birth complications including fistulas, diseases like small pox, polio and so forth, famines caused by droughts as recent as the 1900's) you couldn't possibly want to condemn people to that kind of suffering. Yet if the researches who develop techniques for those things still had to plough their farms, hunt their own game, spin their own cotton etc. the chances of developing those technologies would be extremely diminished. The more creature comforts we have the more "important" stuff we also cure.
I agree completely. While the whole "man vs. technology" message was kind of obviously implied throughout the whole show, I was able to overlook that message and enjoy a show that was about humanity's struggle for survival. The show was amazing in that regard.
Yet in one foul sweep, the ending actually managed to sour the entire series for me:(
Exaggerated ? I tried to convince myself that it is, and that I should relax and realize that the message was implied throughout. But the more I think about it the more I realize that for me the show was about humanity's struggle for survival. It didn't matter that it was survival against technology gone sour. It could just as well have been against aliens or a severe natural disaster, or even a human hegemony that was bent on ethnic cleansing. Whatever. At the end when Lee decides to arrogantly and shortsightedly take it upon himself to condemn the vast majority of the fleet to certain death, it was an insult to the extremely costly struggle that people were involuntarily forced to endure over the past several years.
It strikes me as misguided when people fail to realize that ingenuity and the division of labour is what has allowed humanity to survive against extreme obstacles provided by nature. Darwin's "survival of the fittest" did not mean survival of the most physically fit. It meant survival for those species best able to adapt to the conditions imposed by nature. That's exactly what humans have done by forming social groups and developing technology that has improved our chances for survival and our standards of living. Every single human alive today has that evolutionary process to thank for being alive.
I love nature just as much as anyone, and I hate pollution. I go for walks in parks and I'm an camper and a very "outdoors-man" type of person... but I'm not naive enough to fail to realize that I and my ancestors would not be alive today without ingenuity and the division of labour. Shoving a short-sighted environmentalist message down everyone's throat at the end of the show caused me to look at the whole show from a different perspective and has soured all of the time that I really enjoyed watching how humanity worked out it's issues and conflicts at the brink of extinction.
"Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution."
True, but it will always come down to the cheapest solution. Not the most technologically superior.
As for consumer ISPs, I think the day might come when ISPs start to NAT all of their clients, and charge a fee to get a static, external IP.
Some businesses might implement IPV6, especially when Windows fully supports it (if Vista or 7 don't already, I'm honestly ignorant), but as long as finding ways to remain on IPv4 is cheaper and keeps costs down for customers there will never be a reason to switch. Ever.
"Or B, let your critical app crash now. (And by critical I mean, -critical-, there is no 'just reboot it' and keep going. If it goes down, its going to be years before you put things back together. You can't afford to choose B. Nobody can."
I simply disagree. Look into the depression of 1921. The one that no one ever talks about because it was so short lived. Yet the suffering was really intense. What did the government do about it ? Almost nothing. They got together and had committees and meetings and plans for action but while they were so busy talking about what to do, the problems just fixed themselves naturally.
All this talk of analogies is really inaccurate with regards to the economy. Life goes on. People find ways to make ends meet. Businesses start investing in products and services that actually improve the lives of their peers. If this process is allowed to take it's natural course it happens very quickly.
More of the same does not fix anything. It does not even save anything. Like you said, people are already cluing in that they can't sustain their borrowing practices and need to start saving. The government is trying to prevent that process from taking it's natural course by continuing to slash interest rates and printing more money. It's preventing the natural course from taking hold and is in turn prolonging the suffering. They're the ones who are going to make it take years.
I disagree with the popular comparison that investing is the same as gambling.
Yes, there is always risk that the loan will be defaulted on. Or the project will be unprofitable. However, in a casino the higher the risk the bigger the reward. People like to think that Wall-Street works the same way but it doesn't. A speculator, an entrepreneur if you will, profits by anticipating consumer demand. Companies stocks go up when they succeed at producing a product or service that satisfies the consumer. Thus, the bigger the risk the greater the loss! It is in an entrepreneurs best interest to anticipate consumer demand as accurately as possible. If an entrepreneur fails to do so he stands to lose everything.
Gambling is guessing. It's playing with chance. Investing implies some risk in the sense that we can't anticipate future conditions with accuracy. But the most profitable investors aren't the ones that take the bigger risks, they're the ones who are the best at employing common sense and understanding of human behaviour and economic and political conditions in order to anticipate where the money will be best served satisfying consumers.
The bubbles that got us into this mess isn't because investors were taking huge risks with other people's money. It was because the Fed was messing with people's value judgments (interest rates) to encourage lots of borrowing, Fannie and Freddie were told to buy up mortgages and sell them as securities (further tinkering with people's valuations regarding the viability mortgages and thus housing prices). It's not entirely inaccurate to blame the investors for capitalizing on it, but they were just accessories in crime. They were doing exactly what the institutions were encouraging them to do. They anticipated that housing prices would go up and that people would have more money to spend on useless consumer products like $5 coffees at Starbucks and so they put their money where they saw demand. As soon as those businesses did some basic accounting and saw that they were borrowing and borrowing and not getting anything in return they stopped. The investors lost the money. So if there's any truth to blaming investors it's that they anticipated the bubble to continue. They knew that if Fannie and Freddie got into trouble the government would bail them out (and they were right). That's typical investor behaviour. It's not greedy, but actually required for the market to operate. Of course things are going to get out of whack when you start meddling with interest rates and securing bad loans etc.
What's suspicious is the bailouts to begin with. The banks should have been let to fail, and the government should have been honest with the people and instead of saying "this money will create jobs" they should have said "this money will create jobs as soon as the banks use it to liquidate their debt, of course we don't know how much is going to be required to do that... ".
Of course if the government was really honest with the people they would never claim that they have the ability to "create jobs" to begin with. For every government dollar spent a dollar needs to be taken (even if they print it, the new money "gets" it's value from the existing pool, so it's a tax either way you cut it). This has very little to do with creating jobs and everything to do with keeping the large investment banks in business. Why aren't people asking themselves why businesses are borrowing to expand, instead of using saved capital ? Banks are doing exactly what you would expect them to do right now. They're liquidating their debts and raising interest rates. The problem isn't that they're doing that, the problem is that they're using tax payer money to do it. AND the Fed keeps slashing interest rates to keep them at near 0% levels to get them lending. Which only encourages further malinvestment.
So what's suspicious is that the government is giving the money to banks, but saying that it's going to be invested in infrastructure etc. instead of being frank with the people and saying that it's helping banks pay off their debts.
Yes of course, but they would have had to maintain the minimum reserve amount even without the stimulus money. So either way you cut it, stimulus money is being used to pay debt, rather than lend.
Of course there's no other way that can work, and the government obviously knew this. However, spinning it that way it's going to create reason to say "we just haven't done enough yet! Banks have paid off their debts, now with another X trillion dollars they can start lending!".
Meanwhile the dollar is depreciating because of the new money in circulation and people are suffering due to rising prices. Companies that were involved in unsustainable projects will go out of business because they can't borrow to keep producing their toxic assets that no one is buying. Businesses go under anyway, people lose their jobs but the banks stay in business.
I'm getting sick of hearing "too big to fail". PLEASE explain to me what the frak that is actually supposed to mean, and how this doomsday scenario would actually play out.
When Obama talks about "stimulating the economy" that makes me angry. That proves me to me that he, and the people he is hoping to keep the support of, don't have the slightest clue with regards to economics.
Let's define "the economy" shall we ? "The economy" is the sum total of all economic activity within a certain geographic region. When you get up in the morning and you say to yourself "I think I'll skip my morning coffee this morning" or "I'm gonna get eat a bagel" that's "the economy" right there in action. It's people exchanging with each other.
So let's go back to this whole "too big to fail" doomsday scenario. The basic idea is that we get people focusing solely on all the jobs that will be lost in the short term by the companies that go out of business. In turn they won't have the money to spend on all of the consumer products and so on and we're talking about this massive domino effect where all of these companies go out of business.
Where does this scenario actually lead to ? Let's assume for one second that every single business in American goes out of business. Pretty frightening, albeit impossible, scenario. But let's go along with it and start asking some questions like "what now?" and "how did this happen?".
Let's answer "how did this happen" first.
The short explanation is that companies were engaged in producing products, or buying up debt contracts, that people did not actually see any value in. At least, not anymore. They had to have found them valuable at some point, but WHY ? Because the government was fucking with people's value judgments by getting the Fed to purchase bank bonds which forced interest rates down (the banks have more money in their reserve so they cut interest rates to get people borrowing more). Interest is an important aspect of human value judgment. It stems from the fact that we value things at different times differently. The borrower values something more if he can have it in the nearer future (interest paid) and the lender forgoes something in the nearer future to have more of it later (interest collected). When you screw with people's value judgments like that, you get people borrowing who otherwise would not have borrowed. Projects that in a "normal" market would have been obviously nonviable all of a sudden look profitable on paper. Money gets pumped into goods and services that have no value. The result of this over the last 8 years was the housing bubble. People were spending ridiculous amounts of money on real-estate because they assumed that housing prices would continue to appreciate. The bubble bursts when people realize that they can't sustain these projects. That have to keep borrowing and borrowing and they're not getting any kind of return. So they stop and then you have the domino effect that you're describing. One business after another goes under because they invested in projects that did not have any value.
The Federal Reserve was not the only cause. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were chartered by the US government. The government created them as this new vague thing called a "government-sponsored enterprise" and they were told to buy up mortgages (many sub-prime), package them and sell them as securities. People bought them because they thought that if Fannie and Freddie got into trouble the government would bail them out. And guess what, they did.
So what's the solution ? More of the same ?
Let's see what would happen if we let these companies fail. First of all, banks that don't go out of business will stop lending. They will raise interest rates to discourage borrowing while they pay off their debts. "Oh No!" people cry out. "Banks need to lend otherwise businesses can't sustain themselves!". Bullshit. Businesses that need to borrow to stay in business are not generating profit, which means that they aren't producing anything of
If Bush were still in office people would be talking about how Bush is just giving hand-outs to his rich buddies that head giant corporations.
I find it very curious that people aren't yet making these claims about Obama, even though he's continuing Bush policies on an even greater scale. Last night on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Leno asked Obama where the stimulus money was and Obama said, paraphrasing, "the banks are holding on to it" ! Here's the exact transcript of that part:
"Q Well, when will the money -- this money was given out to the banks. I would have thought by this time it would have sort of trickled down to Main Street, to people wanting to get loans -- I mean, it all went out there months and months ago. Where is it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, what's happening is a lot of these banks are keeping it in the bank because their balance sheets had gotten so bad that they decided, you know what, for us to stay solvent we need to maintain certain capital ratios; we've got to have a certain amount of capital in the bank -- and they haven't started lending it yet."
In other words the Banks are using tax payer money to pay off their debts. Lovely.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist but all of this is highly suspicious. While unemployment is rising rapidly in the US the only area to increase the number of jobs is the US government itself. And the people receiving the stimulus money are the giant investment banks... who have members of their elite group inside of Obama's staff directing him on economic policy (talking about Tim Geithner here). The American people should be very angry right now.
It's the fallacy of keynesian economics to focus only on consumption.
What got us into this mess was over consumption caused by credit expansion. We don't need consumers to spend right now. We need to liquidate our debts, sell off toxic assets, allow unprofitable businesses to fail and start SAVING again. Capital comes from savings, a concept that seems foreign in short-sighted keynesian economics. People think that by saving they're hoarding and the money is sitting idle. This is false. When people save they either put it into a savings account or they invest (lend) it. The money gets used by entrepreneurs who are best at anticipating consumer demand, doing some basic accounting and employing capital into production of goods and services that people will find valuable (ie: things that will improve their lives).
People have responded to that by saying "yeah but the banks are insolvent right now!" That's true. So what will they do ? They will raise interest rates, only lending to people who stand an excellent chance of profiting from the capital and paying it back plus lots of interest. Only people who are extremely confident that borrowing with a high interest rate will still be profitable will borrow. Banks will repay their debts and eventually the market rate of interest will normalize on it's own.
By expanding credit we discourage this process. We keep interest rates down (right now they're at near 0% levels) and interest rates are an important part of human valuation. Interest stems from the fact that we value things differently at different times. The borrower values something more if he can have it in the nearer future (interest paid) and the lender is willing to forgo something in the nearer future to have more of it later (interest collected). Slashing interest rates screws with the process of investing and borrowing. It tries to take a short-cut to production by making it appear that investments are more profitable than they really are. This may create a short rise in employment rates as new start-ups with bad, unsustainable business models use borrowed money to invest in stupid ideas, but it can't last. What it is does is it creates artificial bubbles like the housing boom or the Nasdaq bubble (remember when Yahoo's stock prices valued the company at more than the entire country of New Zealand?!... that wasn't caused by credit expansion but it's a good example of how people's valuations weren't in check)... when you screw with people's value judgments all you do is create more suffering that is more profound later on. It's what got us into this mess in the first place.
Secondly, politicians keep saying that this is going to be worse than the great depression, if it isn't already. They're saying, as you are repeating, that companies are losing jobs fast and that the unemployment rate might hit a whopping 8 or 9 percent in 2009. In 1982 the unemployment rate surpassed 10% and in 1932, during the great depression, the unemployment rate in the US exceeded 24%.
Face it, politicians exaggerate at best, and lie at worst, in order to get their agendas and pet projects passed through. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I believe in empirical evidence and admittedly all I have to offer is circumstantial evidence and conjecture. But given a basic understanding of economics, world history and the fact that Obama is employing the same Wall-Street bankers that he's vilifying to the American people and using as a scapegoat, I'm suspicious. I'm fearful that Tim Geithner (current Treasury Secretary and former President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank), Ben Bernanke and the rest of the Wall-Street guys that Obama has surrounded himself with are intentionally advising congress and the White House on bad policy. That the actions that the US government is taking might actually be designed hyperinflate the US dollar so that in a year or two the central banks can offer us a new North American currency similar to the Euro, packaged in a nice, neat North American Union that will make the Wall-Street Bankers richer at everyone's expense.
Did you happen to catch the Tonight Show with Jay Leno this evening ? When Leno asked Obama where the stimulus money was he said the banks are holding on to it! I tried to find you a youtube but it was only aired an hour or so ago. It should be up on Youtube shortly and you can verify.
Perhaps people should file a class action law-suit ? Perhaps people should start petitioning Google and pledging not to use any of their products until they change. Perhaps we should all start using alternatives so that THOSE companies get our money instead of Google. Google's stock prices will go down, they will lose capital and unless they start investing in producing products that satisfy everyone then their size will shrink.
There is only one way that a company can get big. That is by producing something that makes people's lives better. However, there are are two ways that a company can stay big. The first is to continue doing what made them big. The second is to infiltrate the government to gain protection.
If people are truly convinced that privacy needs to be legislated then in my opinion we should think long and hard about what is and what is not acceptable for every single individual and then come up with an amendment to the constitution. If you believe that privacy is a right then start thinking about how to define that right and how to protect it. Put it in the constitution so that it is not biased and gives every individual protection as a right, rather than giving an industry protection under the guise of regulation and so forth.
"Ah, not necessarily. You assume that people care more about privacy than accessibility and ease of use. This fails to account for people that may be concerned about their privacy, don't trust google, but use it anyway because their level of risk (loss of privacy) is less than the amount of benefit in continuing to use Google. I could argue that market forces allow Google more egregious violations of privacy than its smaller competitors; And further that this is okay because people are making a conscious decision to sacrifice their privacy to gain the "google advantage" (apologies for the market-speak). Please carefully note I am not supporting either position here, merely informing you that they exist."
If people don't care then government can not save them anyway because the majority opinion will always dictate policy, assuming the lobbyists with massive capital aren't doing it. If people are willing to trade their privacy for usability then they are getting what they ask for. If people want privacy AND usability then that implies a demand that is not being filled and you need to ask yourself why isn't it being filled. Someone surely stands to profit from entering the market and filling that need. And since greed seems to rule the world (according to so many people with an opinion on economics lately) then why isn't greed stepping in to capitalize on this lack of product ? My bet is that entering the market is expensive and risky. If I'm right then that raises a new "why"... why is it expensive and risky ? Either because there is no demand, that people don't care about their privacy or because there are regulations restricting new entry into the market.
"Your health care records are protected by federal privacy laws. There is no monopoly (there IS a large broken system, however) in that area. As well, California has passed numerous privacy laws that do not seem to encourage monopolistic behavior. As long as the burden of protecting privacy does not create a significant addition to the total cost of entry for a new competitor into the market in question, this principle should be broadly applicable to all industries (including search engine / service providers)."
I beg to differ. Monopoly does not need to mean one single company. It can be a cartel of companies. It can be a whole industry that is "protected" by government regulation that makes new entry into the industry EXTREMELY difficult. In the case of health care you need to look long and hard at the government-supported American Medical Association. Here you have a cartel of medical professionals with a vested financial interest in determining who gets a license to practice medicine. What KIND of medicine doctors get to practice. It interferes directly with the consumers ability to exercise choice in the market and falls right into the whole scope of "monopoly". It's a cartel and it exists in the name of keeping people safe. It's very easy to sell the public on medical licenses and regulation and so forth because people are scared that without the government ensuring that these things exist they would be exposed to all sorts of weird medicine that will do them harm. It completely undermines people's ability to communicate and keep bad doctors at bay with reputations and health watch groups and non-profits etc. Big Brother keeps us safe so we don't have to.
"I would argue they all suck. Google at least makes that information readily accessible and usable to me. The alternatives still get all my e-mail and search history, but I don't get even a cuddle afterwords."
Again your choice. Unless you let the government get it's hands on it and then you won't have one. Of course you may already not have one. These small start-ups may lack the capital to create a product that would compete with Google in which case you need to go back to my first point and ask why. In fact, why haven't BIG corporations with lots of capital seen a demand for a product that is usable AND protects privacy ? Maybe people don
If people care about these issues, they will stop using them.
People who are REALLY concerned about Google data mining will block all Google domains in the HOSTS file and will explain to their friends and relatives that they can't view the Google map precisely because of all of the privacy concerns. They will recommend alternatives like map quest etc. Web-sites that use Adsense will switch to alternatives because enough of their surfers are blocking Google that it's more profitable to use something else. This will start to cut into Google's bottom line and they will get the message and alter their practices.
UNLESS...
The government steps in with extensive privacy regulations. This will make it difficult for new companies to enter into the market because they will need to make sure that they are complying with these expensive regulations etc. Not to mention that everyone feels all safe and rosey because Big Brother is watching out for them. So they have no reason to consider alternatives anyway. This will help to secure a monopoly for Google (and the other big giant megacorps who can afford to not only spend the resources complying with these regulations but also lobbying the government for even more regulations because they help to keep out competition). This would create a far worse privacy nightmare than the current situation or the free market alternative.
If people are concerned about their privacy and don't trust Google then they will avoid google products. Plain and simple.
If the government steps in and starts requiring companies to comply with various privacy regulations etc. it will only serve to discourage new entry into the industry, helping Google to secure a monopoly on online services. It would do the exact opposite of what privacy advocates want.
There are lots of alternatives out there if you don't want Google to have access to all of your e-mail and search history etc. If you don't care and Google satisfies you then it doesn't matter, use Google. If you are concerned then don't use Google. We don't need the government to help us make these decisions. We can think and choose for ourselves, and discussing these issues is the first step to informing people who don't know. Asking government to keep us safe helps to safe-guard public ignorance, since they know that Big Brother will always have their backs and thus there is no need to think, listen or do research for themselves. That spells a far worse privacy nightmare than the current situation.
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I'm not 100% positive on this, but I do know that many European countries have extremely high gas taxes to discourage people from using fossil-fuels. Some of it may be environmentally-driven, elsewhere it's because Europe has very little in the way of oil reserves and some mercantilism-based philosophies are still prevalent in various governments. So, as the other poster said, I wouldn't be surprised if it's because of import tariffs on fuel combustion vehicles.
I don't think the .com bubble really ended in the early 2000's. The Internet makes it very easy to create something of value with very little invested capital, and so you get lots of experimenting. This has created lots of different "micro-bubbles" and experiments, many of them obviously fail. But then, most off-line businesses fail too. There's also tons of followers everywhere. As soon as one idea catches on you get thousands of clones. Only the best ones survive.
I've been self-employed for over 5 years now. The key to making money online is no different than off-line. You have to offer something that's, you know, valuable. I run ad-supported web-sites and while lots of other sites have gone out of business my sites have actually increased in popularity. I'm not making millions but I passed the 5 year mark and are seeing slow but sustained growth. My biggest, most successful endeavours are ones that were started back in 2004. That's because I think long-term, and aren't in it to make a quick buck. They've only seen sustained growth in daily traffic since their inception. Even in the current "economic crisis", I'm making more than I was the year before. This is because I do my best to out-compete others who offer similar services. I listen to my surfers and respond to their demands. They visit my sites because the alternatives don't provide the same level of satisfaction. I make money entirely through advertising and have only seen business increase by following very simple, elementary business practices. Like don't expect something for nothing; respond to customer feedback; provide something that others find useful. You know. Common sense.
Not to mention indoctrination.
I have two daughters in school in Canada. We like to believe that our school system is better, and maybe it is a little bit (at least it's run by the Provinces and we don't have anything similar to the Department of Education), but what strikes me is the amount of Canadian nationalist propaganda that gets shoved down the students throats. Every school assembly that my daughters participate in (that we attend), they are constantly singing songs about how great Canada is, waving the flag etc. At a remembrance day ceremony they had children in military dress march the Canadian flag. Every morning kids stand to sing "Oh Canada!" and by law every school has to show the Canadian flag.
I know there is nothing unusual about this. The USA does it too, and at least we don't require our students to take a pledge of allegiance. So I don't want to blow this out of proportion. I will pick Canada over communist China any day. But that kind of nationalist indoctrination is something that I would think is more suited to a communist / nationalist country. So put fascist corporatism aside for just a second. I think the schools try to indoctrinate their students with a massive dose of national pride and patriotism in order to have a citizenry that is more forgiving of the government and will not get angry, protest, disobey and generally cause trouble for those in power.
I'm not a pacifist, nor am I endorsing any particular ideal or philosophy. But to offer an alternative Gandhi threw the English out of India using entirely non-violent means. It's worth reading about satyagraha if you genuinely believe in peaceful means before violence and fear the day when you may have to be part of a resistance.
Relax. He's not actually personally blaming violent games. He's just taking a queue from Obama's Chief of Staff and not letting a serious crises go to waste.
I hate to reply to myself but this one point was worded very poorly and I need to clarify:
"Only racing and antique enthusiasts will continue to spend money on fuel combustion vehicles and even they will drive something else on a day to day basis since fossil fuel (and now fuel combustion vehicles, since no one is buying them) is so expensive."
If no one is buying fuel efficient vehicles, the costs of current vehicles will plummet to near-nothingness. Yet once those vehicles are sold to enthusiasts and the rest sent to the junk yard for scraps very few new fuel combustion vehicles will be produced. Limited supply will keep their prices very high.
"Fundamentally I understand your point - if everyone has a straw sucking up the oil fields, then they will dry up much faster."
I don't see that as a problem.
If and when the supply of oil dries up, gas prices will get high enough that people will do some very basic accounting in their heads and come to the conclusion that the cost of driving is no longer in line with their subjective valuations as to what driving is "worth".
Monetary prices are a reflection of subjective use-value. They are the only invention that humans have ever developed to measure subjective use-value. Everybody knows the theory of supply vs. demand. Yet people seem to forget the simple fact when talking about environmental causes.
If oil dries up to the point where the costs of driving exceed what people value driving at, then prices will reach a point where cheap, fuel efficient vehicles are worth more than expensive gas guzzlers (we already saw that in action during the spring/summer of 2008 when gas prices soared to record numbers) and companies will invest more in fuel efficient vehicles to meet the increased demand, which will lower their prices. Having fewer people driving and having a greater ratio of fuel efficient vehicles on the road will create less demand for fossil fuel and will help to keep it's price down, though it will still rise at a slower rate since we are still depleting the supply. As time goes on and gas prices continue to rise, vehicles using alternative energy will start to look more affordable. Increased demand for those vehicles will prompt more investment by entrepreneurs into those markets, new and better technologies in that area will be developed, the supply of those vehicles will be increased to meet demand and prices will come down. Only racing and antique enthusiasts will continue to spend money on fuel combustion vehicles and even they will drive something else on a day to day basis since fossil fuel (and now fuel combustion vehicles, since no one is buying them) is so expensive.
If it turns out that we simply do not possess any possible means of developing an affordable vehicle that does not consume fossil fuel (I *highly* doubt that, but let's assume that it turns out to be the case), then people will simply stop driving. If people can't afford to drive they will have no choice. Pure and simple. We don't need any kind of intervention to get companies to invest in "green" technologies. If we are at risk of consuming all of our fossil fuel then simple economics will take care of the problem naturally.
Heck, going along even further with this argument, it may actually be favourable for the "green cause" in the long run if India and China starts driving fuel combustion vehicles en masse. Since increased demand for fossil fuel will raise gas prices and cause people to switch to greener vehicles faster :)
People are not going spend money on something that they do not feel enriches their lives.
So if you are correct, that Indian families do not need cars and that their money will be better spent on other things, then the majority of Indian families will not go out and buy a vehicle and the companies that are investing money in satisfying a market that doesn't exist will go out of business.
That's the beauty of the market economy. People vote with their wallets and thus determine where investments are made that improve the lives of the majority of people. A company can not stay in business if it does not produce something that enriches the lives of a great number of people (*cough* unless they can persuade the government to give them public money *cough* :p ). We can talk for days on end about the harmful side-effects of certain products (pollution and health), but in the end people will always put their money into areas that they feel make their lives better.
All human action is a means to an end. To relieve felt uneasiness. From the day human had to escape being eaten by a lion to the day we created a vaccine for small pox we have been trying to increase our chances for survival. It is very easy to argue that you and your ancestors owe your very existence to that innate behaviour.
"if you've ever unplugged from the cloud for a significant length of time you'll notice that technology really isn't that important to our lives, we just think it is because we're immersed in it."
A lot of what we use on a day to day basis isn't "necessary", but you can argue that those "creature comforts" (as one of the characters put it) have made us better equipped to spend our resources developing technology that has a more profound impact on our survival.
All technology has been developed to improve our conditions. We are "programmed" to do that. That's how humanity evolved, by forming social groups, dividing labour amongst us and developing goods and techniques of producing goods that make our day-to-day lives easier. Increasing our chances for survival.
The argument that we "long ago reached a point where we started developing only creature comforts that are not necessary for humanity's survival" was being made hundreds of years ago. Karl Marx implied that in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. Yet when we think of the medical conditions that we have cured since then (birth complications including fistulas, diseases like small pox, polio and so forth, famines caused by droughts as recent as the 1900's) you couldn't possibly want to condemn people to that kind of suffering. Yet if the researches who develop techniques for those things still had to plough their farms, hunt their own game, spin their own cotton etc. the chances of developing those technologies would be extremely diminished. The more creature comforts we have the more "important" stuff we also cure.
I agree completely. While the whole "man vs. technology" message was kind of obviously implied throughout the whole show, I was able to overlook that message and enjoy a show that was about humanity's struggle for survival. The show was amazing in that regard.
Yet in one foul sweep, the ending actually managed to sour the entire series for me :(
Exaggerated ? I tried to convince myself that it is, and that I should relax and realize that the message was implied throughout. But the more I think about it the more I realize that for me the show was about humanity's struggle for survival. It didn't matter that it was survival against technology gone sour. It could just as well have been against aliens or a severe natural disaster, or even a human hegemony that was bent on ethnic cleansing. Whatever. At the end when Lee decides to arrogantly and shortsightedly take it upon himself to condemn the vast majority of the fleet to certain death, it was an insult to the extremely costly struggle that people were involuntarily forced to endure over the past several years.
It strikes me as misguided when people fail to realize that ingenuity and the division of labour is what has allowed humanity to survive against extreme obstacles provided by nature. Darwin's "survival of the fittest" did not mean survival of the most physically fit. It meant survival for those species best able to adapt to the conditions imposed by nature. That's exactly what humans have done by forming social groups and developing technology that has improved our chances for survival and our standards of living. Every single human alive today has that evolutionary process to thank for being alive.
I love nature just as much as anyone, and I hate pollution. I go for walks in parks and I'm an camper and a very "outdoors-man" type of person ... but I'm not naive enough to fail to realize that I and my ancestors would not be alive today without ingenuity and the division of labour. Shoving a short-sighted environmentalist message down everyone's throat at the end of the show caused me to look at the whole show from a different perspective and has soured all of the time that I really enjoyed watching how humanity worked out it's issues and conflicts at the brink of extinction.
"Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution."
True, but it will always come down to the cheapest solution. Not the most technologically superior.
As for consumer ISPs, I think the day might come when ISPs start to NAT all of their clients, and charge a fee to get a static, external IP.
Some businesses might implement IPV6, especially when Windows fully supports it (if Vista or 7 don't already, I'm honestly ignorant), but as long as finding ways to remain on IPv4 is cheaper and keeps costs down for customers there will never be a reason to switch. Ever.
"Or B, let your critical app crash now. (And by critical I mean, -critical-, there is no 'just reboot it' and keep going. If it goes down, its going to be years before you put things back together. You can't afford to choose B. Nobody can."
I simply disagree. Look into the depression of 1921. The one that no one ever talks about because it was so short lived. Yet the suffering was really intense. What did the government do about it ? Almost nothing. They got together and had committees and meetings and plans for action but while they were so busy talking about what to do, the problems just fixed themselves naturally.
All this talk of analogies is really inaccurate with regards to the economy. Life goes on. People find ways to make ends meet. Businesses start investing in products and services that actually improve the lives of their peers. If this process is allowed to take it's natural course it happens very quickly.
More of the same does not fix anything. It does not even save anything. Like you said, people are already cluing in that they can't sustain their borrowing practices and need to start saving. The government is trying to prevent that process from taking it's natural course by continuing to slash interest rates and printing more money. It's preventing the natural course from taking hold and is in turn prolonging the suffering. They're the ones who are going to make it take years.
I disagree with the popular comparison that investing is the same as gambling.
Yes, there is always risk that the loan will be defaulted on. Or the project will be unprofitable. However, in a casino the higher the risk the bigger the reward. People like to think that Wall-Street works the same way but it doesn't. A speculator, an entrepreneur if you will, profits by anticipating consumer demand. Companies stocks go up when they succeed at producing a product or service that satisfies the consumer. Thus, the bigger the risk the greater the loss! It is in an entrepreneurs best interest to anticipate consumer demand as accurately as possible. If an entrepreneur fails to do so he stands to lose everything.
Gambling is guessing. It's playing with chance. Investing implies some risk in the sense that we can't anticipate future conditions with accuracy. But the most profitable investors aren't the ones that take the bigger risks, they're the ones who are the best at employing common sense and understanding of human behaviour and economic and political conditions in order to anticipate where the money will be best served satisfying consumers.
The bubbles that got us into this mess isn't because investors were taking huge risks with other people's money. It was because the Fed was messing with people's value judgments (interest rates) to encourage lots of borrowing, Fannie and Freddie were told to buy up mortgages and sell them as securities (further tinkering with people's valuations regarding the viability mortgages and thus housing prices). It's not entirely inaccurate to blame the investors for capitalizing on it, but they were just accessories in crime. They were doing exactly what the institutions were encouraging them to do. They anticipated that housing prices would go up and that people would have more money to spend on useless consumer products like $5 coffees at Starbucks and so they put their money where they saw demand. As soon as those businesses did some basic accounting and saw that they were borrowing and borrowing and not getting anything in return they stopped. The investors lost the money. So if there's any truth to blaming investors it's that they anticipated the bubble to continue. They knew that if Fannie and Freddie got into trouble the government would bail them out (and they were right). That's typical investor behaviour. It's not greedy, but actually required for the market to operate. Of course things are going to get out of whack when you start meddling with interest rates and securing bad loans etc.
What's suspicious is the bailouts to begin with. The banks should have been let to fail, and the government should have been honest with the people and instead of saying "this money will create jobs" they should have said "this money will create jobs as soon as the banks use it to liquidate their debt, of course we don't know how much is going to be required to do that ... ".
Of course if the government was really honest with the people they would never claim that they have the ability to "create jobs" to begin with. For every government dollar spent a dollar needs to be taken (even if they print it, the new money "gets" it's value from the existing pool, so it's a tax either way you cut it). This has very little to do with creating jobs and everything to do with keeping the large investment banks in business. Why aren't people asking themselves why businesses are borrowing to expand, instead of using saved capital ? Banks are doing exactly what you would expect them to do right now. They're liquidating their debts and raising interest rates. The problem isn't that they're doing that, the problem is that they're using tax payer money to do it. AND the Fed keeps slashing interest rates to keep them at near 0% levels to get them lending. Which only encourages further malinvestment.
So what's suspicious is that the government is giving the money to banks, but saying that it's going to be invested in infrastructure etc. instead of being frank with the people and saying that it's helping banks pay off their debts.
Yes of course, but they would have had to maintain the minimum reserve amount even without the stimulus money. So either way you cut it, stimulus money is being used to pay debt, rather than lend.
Of course there's no other way that can work, and the government obviously knew this. However, spinning it that way it's going to create reason to say "we just haven't done enough yet! Banks have paid off their debts, now with another X trillion dollars they can start lending!".
Meanwhile the dollar is depreciating because of the new money in circulation and people are suffering due to rising prices. Companies that were involved in unsustainable projects will go out of business because they can't borrow to keep producing their toxic assets that no one is buying. Businesses go under anyway, people lose their jobs but the banks stay in business.
I'm getting sick of hearing "too big to fail". PLEASE explain to me what the frak that is actually supposed to mean, and how this doomsday scenario would actually play out.
When Obama talks about "stimulating the economy" that makes me angry. That proves me to me that he, and the people he is hoping to keep the support of, don't have the slightest clue with regards to economics.
Let's define "the economy" shall we ? "The economy" is the sum total of all economic activity within a certain geographic region. When you get up in the morning and you say to yourself "I think I'll skip my morning coffee this morning" or "I'm gonna get eat a bagel" that's "the economy" right there in action. It's people exchanging with each other.
So let's go back to this whole "too big to fail" doomsday scenario. The basic idea is that we get people focusing solely on all the jobs that will be lost in the short term by the companies that go out of business. In turn they won't have the money to spend on all of the consumer products and so on and we're talking about this massive domino effect where all of these companies go out of business.
Where does this scenario actually lead to ? Let's assume for one second that every single business in American goes out of business. Pretty frightening, albeit impossible, scenario. But let's go along with it and start asking some questions like "what now?" and "how did this happen?".
Let's answer "how did this happen" first.
The short explanation is that companies were engaged in producing products, or buying up debt contracts, that people did not actually see any value in. At least, not anymore. They had to have found them valuable at some point, but WHY ? Because the government was fucking with people's value judgments by getting the Fed to purchase bank bonds which forced interest rates down (the banks have more money in their reserve so they cut interest rates to get people borrowing more). Interest is an important aspect of human value judgment. It stems from the fact that we value things at different times differently. The borrower values something more if he can have it in the nearer future (interest paid) and the lender forgoes something in the nearer future to have more of it later (interest collected). When you screw with people's value judgments like that, you get people borrowing who otherwise would not have borrowed. Projects that in a "normal" market would have been obviously nonviable all of a sudden look profitable on paper. Money gets pumped into goods and services that have no value. The result of this over the last 8 years was the housing bubble. People were spending ridiculous amounts of money on real-estate because they assumed that housing prices would continue to appreciate. The bubble bursts when people realize that they can't sustain these projects. That have to keep borrowing and borrowing and they're not getting any kind of return. So they stop and then you have the domino effect that you're describing. One business after another goes under because they invested in projects that did not have any value.
The Federal Reserve was not the only cause. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were chartered by the US government. The government created them as this new vague thing called a "government-sponsored enterprise" and they were told to buy up mortgages (many sub-prime), package them and sell them as securities. People bought them because they thought that if Fannie and Freddie got into trouble the government would bail them out. And guess what, they did.
So what's the solution ? More of the same ?
Let's see what would happen if we let these companies fail. First of all, banks that don't go out of business will stop lending. They will raise interest rates to discourage borrowing while they pay off their debts. "Oh No!" people cry out. "Banks need to lend otherwise businesses can't sustain themselves!". Bullshit. Businesses that need to borrow to stay in business are not generating profit, which means that they aren't producing anything of
If Bush were still in office people would be talking about how Bush is just giving hand-outs to his rich buddies that head giant corporations.
I find it very curious that people aren't yet making these claims about Obama, even though he's continuing Bush policies on an even greater scale. Last night on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Leno asked Obama where the stimulus money was and Obama said, paraphrasing, "the banks are holding on to it" ! Here's the exact transcript of that part:
"Q Well, when will the money -- this money was given out to the banks. I would have thought by this time it would have sort of trickled down to Main Street, to people wanting to get loans -- I mean, it all went out there months and months ago. Where is it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, what's happening is a lot of these banks are keeping it in the bank because their balance sheets had gotten so bad that they decided, you know what, for us to stay solvent we need to maintain certain capital ratios; we've got to have a certain amount of capital in the bank -- and they haven't started lending it yet."
In other words the Banks are using tax payer money to pay off their debts. Lovely.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist but all of this is highly suspicious. While unemployment is rising rapidly in the US the only area to increase the number of jobs is the US government itself. And the people receiving the stimulus money are the giant investment banks ... who have members of their elite group inside of Obama's staff directing him on economic policy (talking about Tim Geithner here). The American people should be very angry right now.
It's the fallacy of keynesian economics to focus only on consumption.
What got us into this mess was over consumption caused by credit expansion. We don't need consumers to spend right now. We need to liquidate our debts, sell off toxic assets, allow unprofitable businesses to fail and start SAVING again. Capital comes from savings, a concept that seems foreign in short-sighted keynesian economics. People think that by saving they're hoarding and the money is sitting idle. This is false. When people save they either put it into a savings account or they invest (lend) it. The money gets used by entrepreneurs who are best at anticipating consumer demand, doing some basic accounting and employing capital into production of goods and services that people will find valuable (ie: things that will improve their lives).
People have responded to that by saying "yeah but the banks are insolvent right now!" That's true. So what will they do ? They will raise interest rates, only lending to people who stand an excellent chance of profiting from the capital and paying it back plus lots of interest. Only people who are extremely confident that borrowing with a high interest rate will still be profitable will borrow. Banks will repay their debts and eventually the market rate of interest will normalize on it's own.
By expanding credit we discourage this process. We keep interest rates down (right now they're at near 0% levels) and interest rates are an important part of human valuation. Interest stems from the fact that we value things differently at different times. The borrower values something more if he can have it in the nearer future (interest paid) and the lender is willing to forgo something in the nearer future to have more of it later (interest collected). Slashing interest rates screws with the process of investing and borrowing. It tries to take a short-cut to production by making it appear that investments are more profitable than they really are. This may create a short rise in employment rates as new start-ups with bad, unsustainable business models use borrowed money to invest in stupid ideas, but it can't last. What it is does is it creates artificial bubbles like the housing boom or the Nasdaq bubble (remember when Yahoo's stock prices valued the company at more than the entire country of New Zealand?! ... that wasn't caused by credit expansion but it's a good example of how people's valuations weren't in check) ... when you screw with people's value judgments all you do is create more suffering that is more profound later on. It's what got us into this mess in the first place.
"do you have a cite for that Pelosi quote?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UR5M5teyQ0
It's also worth nothing that the Great Depression was a global problem too.
Secondly, politicians keep saying that this is going to be worse than the great depression, if it isn't already. They're saying, as you are repeating, that companies are losing jobs fast and that the unemployment rate might hit a whopping 8 or 9 percent in 2009. In 1982 the unemployment rate surpassed 10% and in 1932, during the great depression, the unemployment rate in the US exceeded 24%.
It's also worth reminding everyone that Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, said that "You never want a crisis to go to waste".
Face it, politicians exaggerate at best, and lie at worst, in order to get their agendas and pet projects passed through. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I believe in empirical evidence and admittedly all I have to offer is circumstantial evidence and conjecture. But given a basic understanding of economics, world history and the fact that Obama is employing the same Wall-Street bankers that he's vilifying to the American people and using as a scapegoat, I'm suspicious. I'm fearful that Tim Geithner (current Treasury Secretary and former President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank), Ben Bernanke and the rest of the Wall-Street guys that Obama has surrounded himself with are intentionally advising congress and the White House on bad policy. That the actions that the US government is taking might actually be designed hyperinflate the US dollar so that in a year or two the central banks can offer us a new North American currency similar to the Euro, packaged in a nice, neat North American Union that will make the Wall-Street Bankers richer at everyone's expense.
Did you happen to catch the Tonight Show with Jay Leno this evening ? When Leno asked Obama where the stimulus money was he said the banks are holding on to it! I tried to find you a youtube but it was only aired an hour or so ago. It should be up on Youtube shortly and you can verify.
Aren't there already anti-stalking laws ?
Perhaps people should file a class action law-suit ? Perhaps people should start petitioning Google and pledging not to use any of their products until they change. Perhaps we should all start using alternatives so that THOSE companies get our money instead of Google. Google's stock prices will go down, they will lose capital and unless they start investing in producing products that satisfy everyone then their size will shrink.
There is only one way that a company can get big. That is by producing something that makes people's lives better. However, there are are two ways that a company can stay big. The first is to continue doing what made them big. The second is to infiltrate the government to gain protection.
If people are truly convinced that privacy needs to be legislated then in my opinion we should think long and hard about what is and what is not acceptable for every single individual and then come up with an amendment to the constitution. If you believe that privacy is a right then start thinking about how to define that right and how to protect it. Put it in the constitution so that it is not biased and gives every individual protection as a right, rather than giving an industry protection under the guise of regulation and so forth.
"Ah, not necessarily. You assume that people care more about privacy than accessibility and ease of use. This fails to account for people that may be concerned about their privacy, don't trust google, but use it anyway because their level of risk (loss of privacy) is less than the amount of benefit in continuing to use Google. I could argue that market forces allow Google more egregious violations of privacy than its smaller competitors; And further that this is okay because people are making a conscious decision to sacrifice their privacy to gain the "google advantage" (apologies for the market-speak). Please carefully note I am not supporting either position here, merely informing you that they exist."
If people don't care then government can not save them anyway because the majority opinion will always dictate policy, assuming the lobbyists with massive capital aren't doing it. If people are willing to trade their privacy for usability then they are getting what they ask for. If people want privacy AND usability then that implies a demand that is not being filled and you need to ask yourself why isn't it being filled. Someone surely stands to profit from entering the market and filling that need. And since greed seems to rule the world (according to so many people with an opinion on economics lately) then why isn't greed stepping in to capitalize on this lack of product ? My bet is that entering the market is expensive and risky. If I'm right then that raises a new "why" ... why is it expensive and risky ? Either because there is no demand, that people don't care about their privacy or because there are regulations restricting new entry into the market.
"Your health care records are protected by federal privacy laws. There is no monopoly (there IS a large broken system, however) in that area. As well, California has passed numerous privacy laws that do not seem to encourage monopolistic behavior. As long as the burden of protecting privacy does not create a significant addition to the total cost of entry for a new competitor into the market in question, this principle should be broadly applicable to all industries (including search engine / service providers)."
I beg to differ. Monopoly does not need to mean one single company. It can be a cartel of companies. It can be a whole industry that is "protected" by government regulation that makes new entry into the industry EXTREMELY difficult. In the case of health care you need to look long and hard at the government-supported American Medical Association. Here you have a cartel of medical professionals with a vested financial interest in determining who gets a license to practice medicine. What KIND of medicine doctors get to practice. It interferes directly with the consumers ability to exercise choice in the market and falls right into the whole scope of "monopoly". It's a cartel and it exists in the name of keeping people safe. It's very easy to sell the public on medical licenses and regulation and so forth because people are scared that without the government ensuring that these things exist they would be exposed to all sorts of weird medicine that will do them harm. It completely undermines people's ability to communicate and keep bad doctors at bay with reputations and health watch groups and non-profits etc. Big Brother keeps us safe so we don't have to.
"I would argue they all suck. Google at least makes that information readily accessible and usable to me. The alternatives still get all my e-mail and search history, but I don't get even a cuddle afterwords."
Again your choice. Unless you let the government get it's hands on it and then you won't have one. Of course you may already not have one. These small start-ups may lack the capital to create a product that would compete with Google in which case you need to go back to my first point and ask why. In fact, why haven't BIG corporations with lots of capital seen a demand for a product that is usable AND protects privacy ? Maybe people don
If people care about these issues, they will stop using them.
People who are REALLY concerned about Google data mining will block all Google domains in the HOSTS file and will explain to their friends and relatives that they can't view the Google map precisely because of all of the privacy concerns. They will recommend alternatives like map quest etc. Web-sites that use Adsense will switch to alternatives because enough of their surfers are blocking Google that it's more profitable to use something else. This will start to cut into Google's bottom line and they will get the message and alter their practices.
UNLESS ...
The government steps in with extensive privacy regulations. This will make it difficult for new companies to enter into the market because they will need to make sure that they are complying with these expensive regulations etc. Not to mention that everyone feels all safe and rosey because Big Brother is watching out for them. So they have no reason to consider alternatives anyway. This will help to secure a monopoly for Google (and the other big giant megacorps who can afford to not only spend the resources complying with these regulations but also lobbying the government for even more regulations because they help to keep out competition). This would create a far worse privacy nightmare than the current situation or the free market alternative.
If people are concerned about their privacy and don't trust Google then they will avoid google products. Plain and simple.
If the government steps in and starts requiring companies to comply with various privacy regulations etc. it will only serve to discourage new entry into the industry, helping Google to secure a monopoly on online services. It would do the exact opposite of what privacy advocates want.
There are lots of alternatives out there if you don't want Google to have access to all of your e-mail and search history etc. If you don't care and Google satisfies you then it doesn't matter, use Google. If you are concerned then don't use Google. We don't need the government to help us make these decisions. We can think and choose for ourselves, and discussing these issues is the first step to informing people who don't know. Asking government to keep us safe helps to safe-guard public ignorance, since they know that Big Brother will always have their backs and thus there is no need to think, listen or do research for themselves. That spells a far worse privacy nightmare than the current situation.
When I was 10 the year was 1992 and I was on AOL :(
Fuck all those people who say the world has gotten worse in the last 17 years !