Last time I checked, India had stronger worker's rights laws than the US. One quarter of all service and industrial jobs in India are unionized. Read some of the previous posts by Indians; they consider themselves our competent competitors, not chattels.
That's interesting about Marlboro. I've actually come across contradictory information today on American "girlie beer".
The beer served in the Beer and Whiskey League stadiums in spring 1882 was
recognizably the American beverage we know today. Milder, lighter, and less bitter than older American ales or European beers, pale, effervescent, low in alcohol, and served very cold, it was a refreshment, meant to be drunk quickly. No longer part of the history of American nourishment, it was now part of the history of American entertainment.
World War II was no help either. Grain again became scarce due to the war effort of feeding hungry troops, along with the fact that a very large portion of our beer drinking population was overseas again forced the breweries to economize. Again they were forced to make the choice between less beer with more ingredients or more beer with less ingredients. Only this time they noticed an interesting trend - as the beer got lighter, more women were buying it. With that, most of you that have read this far already know the rest of the story. Let's just say that Classic American Pilsner was the beer that our forefathers drank before it morphed into the generic lifeless product that you find in 12 packs of cans everywhere today.
I learned about antitrust during the MS case too. I got economics audio books on CD to listen to while commuting. My first impulse was to assume antitrust leveled the playing field. The more I learned, the more I saw the playing field being inadvertently contorted for the worse. Actually, I'm personally more concerned with how economic interventionism hurts people on the bottom rung. MS and the RIAA have a lot more clout than many others whose livelihoods are strangled by misguided government.
[off-topic soapbox] I agree with you that Anarcho-capitalism is as unatractive as other utopian schemes. I strongly disagree that Communism is a great idea, improperly implemented. Communism isn't simply a philosophy of "general benevolence" as some people imagine. No plan based on Marx's specific ideas could lead to anything other than regimentation and misery. We have 141 years of hindsight with which to judge Das Kapital.
To me, you may as well say Nazism is a great plan that went awry. After all, Hitler didn't mention mass murders in Mein Kampf. I think if as many people read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (about life in a Soviet gulag) as have read "The Diary of Anne Frank", Communism would be as discredited as it deserves to be. Stalin killed more Ukrainians than Hitler killed Jews. We learned a lesson from Nazism. But it seems like the lesson from Communism hasn't sunk in as well. It's been estimated that Communist governments killed 95 million people in the 20th century. By contrast, wars killed 36 million.
I'm sure you didn't mean much by it, but the words "Communism is a great idea that didn't work out" provoke me to speak out on behalf of the dead, silent, forgotten victims of that "great idea". [/off-topic soapbox]
Hey Yakov, there are plenty of good American beers. In fact, we now have a wider range of styles than any other country. North Coast Brewing in California is one of the finest breweries in the world.
Yes, we have lots of good beers here, and consequently there's always a kegger, stein hoist, or beer blast going on. In California you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, the Party can always find you.
You have enough interest to understand the justification for antitrust law, but boredom must have set in before you learned about its practical consequences. You've accepted the theoretical justification for something that has proven itself a failure time and time again.
The post you linked to presents a naive position: that antitrust law is a second rate solution to problems price controls could better solve. In theory, antitrust is a shield for consumers. In practice, it's always been a sword for class action law firms and uncompetitive rivals.
Read about antitrust's "biggest hits": Great Northern, Standard Oil, IBM. The actual result of antitrust is always antithetical to its purpose.
Beer snobs can be too confrontational about cheap beer. However, as a beer lover, I always encourage philistine beer drinkers to broaden their horizons. Beer can be a satisfying hobby, not just a way to get groggy. If you're skeptical, check out "Zymurgy" or "All About Beer" magazine.
P.S. If you think Germany makes the best brews, have you sampled any of Belgium's liquid poems.
One thing that's difficult about making light beers is that if the slightest thing goes wrong there's no flavor to mask the mistake. A little bit of sourness might go unnoticed in a hearty Scotch ale, but it'd make a Pilsner undrinkable.
Flavorless beer hasn't always been an American tradition. You think the beer Ben Franklin and Tom Jefferson drank looked or tasted anything like Bud? Craft beer was part of American culture until prohibition.
You call my beer "yuppy beer", I'll call your beer "girl's beer". Watery, yellow, fizzy, vaguely pilsner-style American beer gained popularity while being marketed to women as men were away during WWI.
That's hilarious satire, friend. However, diparaging tasteless macrobrew isn't about elitism, it's about respecting beer. Brewing in the US is still recovering from prohibition which wiped out all our small breweries. Gourmet beer drinkers are succeeding in recultivating appreciation for craft brew in our country. In Germany, it would be false advertising to brew a rice-based beverage like Budweiser and call it beer.
The gourmet coffee craze has changed the coffee industry. It's not just monocled Bentley owners who choose a $3 cup of gourmet aribica over a 30 cup of Folgers today. I see plenty of constuction workers at my local Starbucks. The same thing is happening to beer. My local grocery store now carries a $20 per bottle Belgian beer.
Letting price reflect demand is even more important in the case of "necessities". If food, water, or electrical generators are in scarce supply somewhere, you'd be ill served by worrying about price fixing, collusion, and gouging. The high prices are what'll motivate sellers to take the risk of getting those necessities to where they're needed. When a central planner tries to lower prices through fiat, it guarantees overconsumption and shortage. For example, Emperor Julian's price controls on Corn in Antioch.
It may be better to look at older examples that we can analyze dispassionately. Consider Great Northern's "price discrimination" on shipping to Japan or Standard Oil's "predatory" kerosene pricing. They were both deemed antitrust violators in their day, but with hindsight we can see they were both just charging what the market would bear. The RIAA's detractors (in matters of pricing) will seem just as silly 100 years from now as James Hill and John Rockefeller's aristarchs do today. It won't be antitrust suits that increase the supply of music anymore than it was antitrust suits that brought down the price of international shipping or petroleum - only technology achieved that.
If something is overpriced, doesn't that create opportunity for competitors to enter the market and incentive for consumers to seek alternatives? If CDs are too expensive, entertainment dollars will go elsewhere, to the RIAA's detriment.
I don't understand how you can go into the record store, pay $20 for a Metallica CD and then come back later and say "these colluding SOBs fleeced me". If they were charging too much, why didn't you spend your $20 on a movie, Nintendo game, or concert ticket instead? The fact that you willingly payed the price they asked means you weren't overcharged, regardless of what they could have charged in some theoretical perfectly competitive market.
It's like voting for Ralph Nader and then coming back later to sue him because you feel like you got gyped. You bought his pitch, you spent your vote, and if you don't like what it bought you (regardless of Nader's monopoly on credible ultra-progressive representation in the presidential race), you've got no one to blame but yourself - likewise for the crummy $20 Metallica album.
"First Colonists" has a single player mode, except when playing with expansions (Knights & Cities or Seafarers). It's a very polished rendition of the game. The AI is actually quite poor though. Be sure and download the nice music tracks that go with it.
Settlers 3D doesn't have single-player (last time I checked), but is still worth checking out. The PS2 version is playable on the Net but only available in Japan. Capcom was supposed to bring it to the US, but it looks like that fell apart. From the previews I've seen, the PS2 version had great AI. Bargaining when you make trades is a big part of the fun, and it looks like the PS2 version captured that aspect by giving the AI distinct personalities.
Someone on the IMDB message board suggested Johnny Depp for Zaphod. Having seen "Pirates of the Caribbean", I think Depp could perfectly portray Zaphod's traits: self-absorbed, charismatic, reckless, and daring.
Language can't evolve without conquest? I'd trade a dearth of invading Huns for a sterile, inbred language, thank you.
By the way, what's an example of a non-inbred language? Wouldn't the idea of a pure language be as absurd as the idea of a pure race?
Languages that one speaks could be called sterile. Latin, Koine Greek, and Ottoman Turkish are dead. But I'd be quite intrigued to hear an example of sterile language spoken by living people.
If you took a picture of a cloud and then came back hours later, you'd be suprised if the cloud looked the same. Language and culture aren't museum artifacts preserved in a vacuum. They're living, breathing things that change each day. In cultures without writing, language can change so quickly that within just a few generations it may morph as dramatically as Latin has to French.
Latin, French, and now English have enjoyed a heyday as the lingua franca. Chinese or Hindi might be top dog tomorrow. Opposing English language influence seems as effective as promoting Esperanto.
Power and riches were the basis for the crusades, like all wars. Religion was a pretext. France made preemptive strikes against Arab encroachers who had already conquered Spain. It was as much about religion as W's war was about WMD.
My main fear of protectionism comes from China's history. China's economic and scientific progress outperformed the West from 1 to 1500 AD. Then the Ching dynasty consciously chose a policy of extreme protectionism that put China in stasis for the next half a millennium. By the 1970's, China's GDP was only on a par with Canada's. China is a big country. It still stagnated when it was cut off from the rest of the world.
How would isolating our economy create jobs? Would these jobs be any better for our economy than WPA "make work"? Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't seem much better than banning dishwashing machines so restaurants would have to hire more people.
I know I'm biased. Even if it meant the US could have three jobs for every worker, I wouldn't close trade with Belgium. There are regions of Belgium where beer is brewed with wild yeasts that exist no where else in the world. Cutting ties to Belgium, would be for me like denying a diabetic his only source of insulin.;) I'm also worried what would happen to my friends in Turkey if we retreated into an economic cacoon. Turkey has a fragile economy. I know some of my best friends there would be in a tight spot if they were denied access to our market.
I'm not a blind follower of the theoretical benefits of free market ideology. My brother's mortgage company expanded their core business because they were able to reduce their overhead by offshoring some work to India. He has his job because of that expansion.
The Sims doesn't prove anything, but playing it did help me see how consumerism affects me. Soon after first playing the Sims, while watching basketball on my father-in-law's big screen TV, I realized my "fun meter" really was higher than sitting in front of my 13" at home, just like a Sim. The Sims game distills basic human needs in a way that made me more self aware of what brings me satisfaction. I've read J.K. Galbraith's ideas about how passive consumers are brainwashed into buying stuff they don't need. I've come to realize that Galbraith's ideas aren't any more true for me than they are for a Sim. I think Will Wright has done a better job than Abraham Maslow of defining human needs, at least for the 21st century man.
Maybe consumers aren't as passive as you think. I used to carry around my guitar and scorn "passive consumers" carrying Walkmans (Walkmen?) Nowadays, I'm an avid fan of "recording artists". Contrary to my erstwhile scorn, listening to recordings can be engaging. I used to badmouth TV watchers. Who would watch Seinfeld when they could be reading Proust? With all the TV-inspired fan fiction on the Internet, it's clear TV can be a creative impetus. I used to think sports fan were the worst of passive dolts. Today, I'm a basketball fanatic. Following the NBA can be at least as compelling as Proust. And, contrary to all my geek impulses, I now spend a fair amount of time on the court reverse engineering Karl Malone's hook shot and Allen Iverson's jumper.
In Poul Anderson's story, "The Last of the Deliverers", technology has given everyone the ability to live completely "off the grid". A small town is capable of thriving without any outside commerce. People can produce everything they need without any traditional income. Consumerism is obsolete and dead. Governments have nothing to tax, so they devolve to the most local level. Anderson's scenario seemed idyllic. Short of such a sci fi utopia, I don't see how protectionism and anticonsumerism can pan out for the best. Look to the economies of Syria or Myanmar to see what protectionism is like in the real world.
Navin Oh, my God! (Navin takes the book.) Thank you.
(he rips through the book, looking for something)
Navin The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!
Harry Well I wish I could get so excited about nothing.
Navin Nothing? Are you kidding?! Page 73, Johnson, Navin, R.! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, you're name in print, that makes people. I'm impressed! Things are going to start happening to me now.
[At Madman's house]
Madman (he picks a name at random from the new phone book) Johnson, Navin, R. Sounds like a typical bastard. (tears out page, grabs gun, and heads for the door)
You're not a foreigner-hating curmudgeon; I'm not the capitalist counterpart of a Soviet commisar. I want what's best for myself, my countrymen, and the world abroad, just as I'm sure you do. If I were an idealogue, I'd say "David Ricardo's treatise on economic theory shows... blah blah blah". Instead, I'm saying "you think think the glass is 9% empty, I think it's 91% full." That's worldview.
Have you ever read biographies of corporate execs? I have. By and large, they are men of Antaean charisma. You couldn't replace John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Steve Jobs, or Howard Schultz with a man on the street anymore than you could replace Miguel de Icaza with Joe (or Hardeep) Sixpack. That's like saying the NBA could save money by replacing their high paid pros with guys from the CBA.
Do you complain when electronics are imported to transparently drive down prices? Best Buy operates on razor thin margins. I don't know about you, but I sure like being able to buy a DVD player or stereo for a song. I'd feel hypocritical if I then turned around and complained when labor is imported so consumers of programming labor (e.g. the financial industry) can get a bargain. Disclaimer: my brother's job in the mortgage industry benefits directly from Indian workers.
I'm just speaking for myself here, but when I feel the impulse to begrudge Indians I see it as coming from the worst aspect of my humanity. I've got a wife and son to support. Competition from Indians isn't making my life any easier right now. If I start thinking ill of Indians, I'm remember of a group of displaced Detroit autoworkers in the 80's who killed a random Asian man (who turned out to not even be Japanese). Keeping foreign workers out of the US seems motivated by that same blind, misplaced, short-sighted self-interest.
Your son sounds like he's tuned in to our future. The US has a dominant entertainment industry. I'm sure a lot more kids today aspire to work in the video game field than as mechanics or auto workers. Vacationing in Turkey a few years back, I got the distinct impression that the world has no shortage of demand for American entertainment.
I don't have a "plan" for America. Individual producers can determine what's in demand that they have a knack for serving or producing. A Soviet commisar might say "our best experts determine the nation should focus on producing shoelaces this year." I, however, think individuals acting under their own motivations, can yield a better result than any centralized planner.
The smartest, most hard-working programmer on the planet would still have his ass kicked by Brad Miller on the basketball court. Likewise, you don't have to be lazy or dumb to have your industry outpaced by another country. The US makes good movies, Germany makes good cars, Costa Rica grows good coffee, India makes good software. None of that's the result of a globalisation conspiracy. Sure, China's $300 billion in foreign reserves helps keep the dollar strong. But do you think that even with a weak dollar we could produce knick knacks as efficiently as the Chinese?
Cutting yourself off from international commerce is suicide. The most economically isolationist countries are the most wretched: North Korea and Belarus, for example. I don't want to follow their pattern. Your point about federalism is interesting, but probably too big of a topic to delve into here.
I like Home Depot, and I know people who have enjoyed working there. Some things scale well (like hardware and book stores), others (like craft & pet stores) seem better suited for mom & pop. Home Depot provides a lot of good services that mom & pop could never afford (e.g. huge stock of rental tools, home repair clinics, self-checkout counters).
Have you ever played Sims? A sim needs to regulate his hunger, comfort, energy, fun, social contacts, etc. Pure consumerism by itself won't make a sim happy. Buying your sim a large screen TV and pool table will keep his "fun" meter high, but if his "social" meter is bottomed out he'll still be miserable. I don't think that's too far from reality; Will Wright based Sims on David Friedman's "Economics of Everyday Life." Consumerism is hollow by itself. But, in context, buying stuff lets us furnish ourselves "a social and a personal identity."
P.S. Have you ever read the Poul Anderson story "The Last of the Deliverers"? Our discussions reminds me of it.
To me, it's not about ideology ("free markets" or whatever), it's about worldview. Have you read the Wired article on Indian progammers? It's got both sides of the story. These aren't faceless foreign devils, they're ambitious, well-educated, talented people who are doing a job cheaper than we can do it. Our character will be shown by whether we face this challenge openly, with optimisim, or as defeatist isolationists.
"Buy American" campaigns won't work, whether it's cars, VCRs, or progamming labor. Capital and labor mobility have been the norm for the past couple of centuries. That means that when labor is too expensive, either jobs or workers will move across borders.
The wages some of those unemployed 9% of American programmers want exceed the demand for their labor. Dell sells more PCs than Alienware. That doesn't mean Dell should be restricted from selling its low price PCs so Alienware can sell more of its expensive systems.
I'm not necessarily a total advocate of the way these immigration programs work. But it's better than nothing for foreign workers who get better jobs here. Do you think idle workers in "third world" countries shouldn't be allowed to move to where their skills can be best applied? How can the global economic engine not benefit from India's enormous idle labor pool being put into gear?
So it's not about protectionism, it's about restricting immigration. If the demand for work has dried up here, then what's motivating the immigration? And if immigrants aren't better off here (because of "indentured servant conditions"), then why aren't they staying in their homeland?
Take this with a grain of salt... but it may be possible that your weltanschauung isn't at the same level as your programming skill. You could have the technical acumen of Linus Torvalds, but if you didn't have his ambition, drive, optimism, or charisma, you might still languish. Being a foreigner also has its downsides. You make it sound like being a greybeard is an insurmountable handicap. There are successful people in the software world who've overcome bigger hindrances.
Try reading the "personal productivity" section of this website and see if it doesn't change your outlook. Joel (from JoelOnSoftare.com) recommended this site, and it motivated me out of the doldrums.
Why can't we have an infinite amount of jobs: digging holes and then filling them in again, counting the grains of sand on the beach, or just whistling Dixie all day long? We could outlaw innovation and competition so no job is ever threatened. Maybe we could even ban and destroy technologies that reduce labor: say good riddance to bulldozers, dishwashers, and computers.
I find reading biographies of business leaders to be an inspiring way to avoid the doldrums. For example, read the bio of Howard Shultz (of Starbucks Corp) if you'd like to hear an alternative to sitting around waiting for jobs to drop from the sky.
Slashdot Mirror
Last time I checked, India had stronger worker's rights laws than the US. One quarter of all service and industrial jobs in India are unionized. Read some of the previous posts by Indians; they consider themselves our competent competitors, not chattels.
I learned about antitrust during the MS case too. I got economics audio books on CD to listen to while commuting. My first impulse was to assume antitrust leveled the playing field. The more I learned, the more I saw the playing field being inadvertently contorted for the worse. Actually, I'm personally more concerned with how economic interventionism hurts people on the bottom rung. MS and the RIAA have a lot more clout than many others whose livelihoods are strangled by misguided government.
[off-topic soapbox]
I agree with you that Anarcho-capitalism is as unatractive as other utopian schemes. I strongly disagree that Communism is a great idea, improperly implemented. Communism isn't simply a philosophy of "general benevolence" as some people imagine. No plan based on Marx's specific ideas could lead to anything other than regimentation and misery. We have 141 years of hindsight with which to judge Das Kapital.
To me, you may as well say Nazism is a great plan that went awry. After all, Hitler didn't mention mass murders in Mein Kampf. I think if as many people read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (about life in a Soviet gulag) as have read "The Diary of Anne Frank", Communism would be as discredited as it deserves to be. Stalin killed more Ukrainians than Hitler killed Jews. We learned a lesson from Nazism. But it seems like the lesson from Communism hasn't sunk in as well. It's been estimated that Communist governments killed 95 million people in the 20th century. By contrast, wars killed 36 million.
I'm sure you didn't mean much by it, but the words "Communism is a great idea that didn't work out" provoke me to speak out on behalf of the dead, silent, forgotten victims of that "great idea".
[/off-topic soapbox]
Peace.
Hey Yakov, there are plenty of good American beers. In fact, we now have a wider range of styles than any other country. North Coast Brewing in California is one of the finest breweries in the world.
Yes, we have lots of good beers here, and consequently there's always a kegger, stein hoist, or beer blast going on. In California you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, the Party can always find you.
You have enough interest to understand the justification for antitrust law, but boredom must have set in before you learned about its practical consequences. You've accepted the theoretical justification for something that has proven itself a failure time and time again.
The post you linked to presents a naive position: that antitrust law is a second rate solution to problems price controls could better solve. In theory, antitrust is a shield for consumers. In practice, it's always been a sword for class action law firms and uncompetitive rivals.
Read about antitrust's "biggest hits": Great Northern, Standard Oil, IBM. The actual result of antitrust is always antithetical to its purpose.
Beer snobs can be too confrontational about cheap beer. However, as a beer lover, I always encourage philistine beer drinkers to broaden their horizons. Beer can be a satisfying hobby, not just a way to get groggy. If you're skeptical, check out "Zymurgy" or "All About Beer" magazine.
P.S. If you think Germany makes the best brews, have you sampled any of Belgium's liquid poems.
One thing that's difficult about making light beers is that if the slightest thing goes wrong there's no flavor to mask the mistake. A little bit of sourness might go unnoticed in a hearty Scotch ale, but it'd make a Pilsner undrinkable.
Flavorless beer hasn't always been an American tradition. You think the beer Ben Franklin and Tom Jefferson drank looked or tasted anything like Bud? Craft beer was part of American culture until prohibition.
You call my beer "yuppy beer", I'll call your beer "girl's beer". Watery, yellow, fizzy, vaguely pilsner-style American beer gained popularity while being marketed to women as men were away during WWI.
That's hilarious satire, friend. However, diparaging tasteless macrobrew isn't about elitism, it's about respecting beer. Brewing in the US is still recovering from prohibition which wiped out all our small breweries. Gourmet beer drinkers are succeeding in recultivating appreciation for craft brew in our country. In Germany, it would be false advertising to brew a rice-based beverage like Budweiser and call it beer.
The gourmet coffee craze has changed the coffee industry. It's not just monocled Bentley owners who choose a $3 cup of gourmet aribica over a 30 cup of Folgers today. I see plenty of constuction workers at my local Starbucks. The same thing is happening to beer. My local grocery store now carries a $20 per bottle Belgian beer.
If you owned all the aluminum in the world I could still choose to buy tin or steel instead. Choice among entertainment options is even more elastic.
How is setting a minimum price that you want your product sold at lying? This isn't justice being brought down on someone. It's lawyers sucking blood.
Letting price reflect demand is even more important in the case of "necessities". If food, water, or electrical generators are in scarce supply somewhere, you'd be ill served by worrying about price fixing, collusion, and gouging. The high prices are what'll motivate sellers to take the risk of getting those necessities to where they're needed. When a central planner tries to lower prices through fiat, it guarantees overconsumption and shortage. For example, Emperor Julian's price controls on Corn in Antioch.
It may be better to look at older examples that we can analyze dispassionately. Consider Great Northern's "price discrimination" on shipping to Japan or Standard Oil's "predatory" kerosene pricing. They were both deemed antitrust violators in their day, but with hindsight we can see they were both just charging what the market would bear. The RIAA's detractors (in matters of pricing) will seem just as silly 100 years from now as James Hill and John Rockefeller's aristarchs do today. It won't be antitrust suits that increase the supply of music anymore than it was antitrust suits that brought down the price of international shipping or petroleum - only technology achieved that.
If something is overpriced, doesn't that create opportunity for competitors to enter the market and incentive for consumers to seek alternatives? If CDs are too expensive, entertainment dollars will go elsewhere, to the RIAA's detriment.
I don't understand how you can go into the record store, pay $20 for a Metallica CD and then come back later and say "these colluding SOBs fleeced me". If they were charging too much, why didn't you spend your $20 on a movie, Nintendo game, or concert ticket instead? The fact that you willingly payed the price they asked means you weren't overcharged, regardless of what they could have charged in some theoretical perfectly competitive market.
It's like voting for Ralph Nader and then coming back later to sue him because you feel like you got gyped. You bought his pitch, you spent your vote, and if you don't like what it bought you (regardless of Nader's monopoly on credible ultra-progressive representation in the presidential race), you've got no one to blame but yourself - likewise for the crummy $20 Metallica album.
"First Colonists" has a single player mode, except when playing with expansions (Knights & Cities or Seafarers). It's a very polished rendition of the game. The AI is actually quite poor though. Be sure and download the nice music tracks that go with it.
Settlers 3D doesn't have single-player (last time I checked), but is still worth checking out. The PS2 version is playable on the Net but only available in Japan. Capcom was supposed to bring it to the US, but it looks like that fell apart. From the previews I've seen, the PS2 version had great AI. Bargaining when you make trades is a big part of the fun, and it looks like the PS2 version captured that aspect by giving the AI distinct personalities.
Someone on the IMDB message board suggested Johnny Depp for Zaphod. Having seen "Pirates of the Caribbean", I think Depp could perfectly portray Zaphod's traits: self-absorbed, charismatic, reckless, and daring.
Language can't evolve without conquest? I'd trade a dearth of invading Huns for a sterile, inbred language, thank you.
By the way, what's an example of a non-inbred language? Wouldn't the idea of a pure language be as absurd as the idea of a pure race?
Languages that one speaks could be called sterile. Latin, Koine Greek, and Ottoman Turkish are dead. But I'd be quite intrigued to hear an example of sterile language spoken by living people.
Next, Lucas might release a line of beer: Pilsner Amidala, Ackbar Ale, and Lager Calrissian. ...and for liquor: Qui-Gon Gin and Tonic.
If you took a picture of a cloud and then came back hours later, you'd be suprised if the cloud looked the same. Language and culture aren't museum artifacts preserved in a vacuum. They're living, breathing things that change each day. In cultures without writing, language can change so quickly that within just a few generations it may morph as dramatically as Latin has to French.
Latin, French, and now English have enjoyed a heyday as the lingua franca. Chinese or Hindi might be top dog tomorrow. Opposing English language influence seems as effective as promoting Esperanto.
Power and riches were the basis for the crusades, like all wars. Religion was a pretext. France made preemptive strikes against Arab encroachers who had already conquered Spain. It was as much about religion as W's war was about WMD.
My main fear of protectionism comes from China's history. China's economic and scientific progress outperformed the West from 1 to 1500 AD. Then the Ching dynasty consciously chose a policy of extreme protectionism that put China in stasis for the next half a millennium. By the 1970's, China's GDP was only on a par with Canada's. China is a big country. It still stagnated when it was cut off from the rest of the world.
;) I'm also worried what would happen to my friends in Turkey if we retreated into an economic cacoon. Turkey has a fragile economy. I know some of my best friends there would be in a tight spot if they were denied access to our market.
How would isolating our economy create jobs? Would these jobs be any better for our economy than WPA "make work"? Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't seem much better than banning dishwashing machines so restaurants would have to hire more people.
I know I'm biased. Even if it meant the US could have three jobs for every worker, I wouldn't close trade with Belgium. There are regions of Belgium where beer is brewed with wild yeasts that exist no where else in the world. Cutting ties to Belgium, would be for me like denying a diabetic his only source of insulin.
I'm not a blind follower of the theoretical benefits of free market ideology. My brother's mortgage company expanded their core business because they were able to reduce their overhead by offshoring some work to India. He has his job because of that expansion.
The Sims doesn't prove anything, but playing it did help me see how consumerism affects me. Soon after first playing the Sims, while watching basketball on my father-in-law's big screen TV, I realized my "fun meter" really was higher than sitting in front of my 13" at home, just like a Sim. The Sims game distills basic human needs in a way that made me more self aware of what brings me satisfaction. I've read J.K. Galbraith's ideas about how passive consumers are brainwashed into buying stuff they don't need. I've come to realize that Galbraith's ideas aren't any more true for me than they are for a Sim. I think Will Wright has done a better job than Abraham Maslow of defining human needs, at least for the 21st century man.
Maybe consumers aren't as passive as you think. I used to carry around my guitar and scorn "passive consumers" carrying Walkmans (Walkmen?) Nowadays, I'm an avid fan of "recording artists". Contrary to my erstwhile scorn, listening to recordings can be engaging. I used to badmouth TV watchers. Who would watch Seinfeld when they could be reading Proust? With all the TV-inspired fan fiction on the Internet, it's clear TV can be a creative impetus. I used to think sports fan were the worst of passive dolts. Today, I'm a basketball fanatic. Following the NBA can be at least as compelling as Proust. And, contrary to all my geek impulses, I now spend a fair amount of time on the court reverse engineering Karl Malone's hook shot and Allen Iverson's jumper.
In Poul Anderson's story, "The Last of the Deliverers", technology has given everyone the ability to live completely "off the grid". A small town is capable of thriving without any outside commerce. People can produce everything they need without any traditional income. Consumerism is obsolete and dead. Governments have nothing to tax, so they devolve to the most local level. Anderson's scenario seemed idyllic. Short of such a sci fi utopia, I don't see how protectionism and anticonsumerism can pan out for the best. Look to the economies of Syria or Myanmar to see what protectionism is like in the real world.
You're not a foreigner-hating curmudgeon; I'm not the capitalist counterpart of a Soviet commisar. I want what's best for myself, my countrymen, and the world abroad, just as I'm sure you do. If I were an idealogue, I'd say "David Ricardo's treatise on economic theory shows... blah blah blah". Instead, I'm saying "you think think the glass is 9% empty, I think it's 91% full." That's worldview.
Have you ever read biographies of corporate execs? I have. By and large, they are men of Antaean charisma. You couldn't replace John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Steve Jobs, or Howard Schultz with a man on the street anymore than you could replace Miguel de Icaza with Joe (or Hardeep) Sixpack. That's like saying the NBA could save money by replacing their high paid pros with guys from the CBA.
Do you complain when electronics are imported to transparently drive down prices? Best Buy operates on razor thin margins. I don't know about you, but I sure like being able to buy a DVD player or stereo for a song. I'd feel hypocritical if I then turned around and complained when labor is imported so consumers of programming labor (e.g. the financial industry) can get a bargain. Disclaimer: my brother's job in the mortgage industry benefits directly from Indian workers.
I'm just speaking for myself here, but when I feel the impulse to begrudge Indians I see it as coming from the worst aspect of my humanity. I've got a wife and son to support. Competition from Indians isn't making my life any easier right now. If I start thinking ill of Indians, I'm remember of a group of displaced Detroit autoworkers in the 80's who killed a random Asian man (who turned out to not even be Japanese). Keeping foreign workers out of the US seems motivated by that same blind, misplaced, short-sighted self-interest.
Your son sounds like he's tuned in to our future. The US has a dominant entertainment industry. I'm sure a lot more kids today aspire to work in the video game field than as mechanics or auto workers. Vacationing in Turkey a few years back, I got the distinct impression that the world has no shortage of demand for American entertainment.
I don't have a "plan" for America. Individual producers can determine what's in demand that they have a knack for serving or producing. A Soviet commisar might say "our best experts determine the nation should focus on producing shoelaces this year." I, however, think individuals acting under their own motivations, can yield a better result than any centralized planner.
The smartest, most hard-working programmer on the planet would still have his ass kicked by Brad Miller on the basketball court. Likewise, you don't have to be lazy or dumb to have your industry outpaced by another country. The US makes good movies, Germany makes good cars, Costa Rica grows good coffee, India makes good software. None of that's the result of a globalisation conspiracy. Sure, China's $300 billion in foreign reserves helps keep the dollar strong. But do you think that even with a weak dollar we could produce knick knacks as efficiently as the Chinese?
Cutting yourself off from international commerce is suicide. The most economically isolationist countries are the most wretched: North Korea and Belarus, for example. I don't want to follow their pattern. Your point about federalism is interesting, but probably too big of a topic to delve into here.
I like Home Depot, and I know people who have enjoyed working there. Some things scale well (like hardware and book stores), others (like craft & pet stores) seem better suited for mom & pop. Home Depot provides a lot of good services that mom & pop could never afford (e.g. huge stock of rental tools, home repair clinics, self-checkout counters).
Have you ever played Sims? A sim needs to regulate his hunger, comfort, energy, fun, social contacts, etc. Pure consumerism by itself won't make a sim happy. Buying your sim a large screen TV and pool table will keep his "fun" meter high, but if his "social" meter is bottomed out he'll still be miserable. I don't think that's too far from reality; Will Wright based Sims on David Friedman's "Economics of Everyday Life." Consumerism is hollow by itself. But, in context, buying stuff lets us furnish ourselves "a social and a personal identity."
P.S. Have you ever read the Poul Anderson story "The Last of the Deliverers"? Our discussions reminds me of it.
To me, it's not about ideology ("free markets" or whatever), it's about worldview. Have you read the Wired article on Indian progammers? It's got both sides of the story. These aren't faceless foreign devils, they're ambitious, well-educated, talented people who are doing a job cheaper than we can do it. Our character will be shown by whether we face this challenge openly, with optimisim, or as defeatist isolationists.
"Buy American" campaigns won't work, whether it's cars, VCRs, or progamming labor. Capital and labor mobility have been the norm for the past couple of centuries. That means that when labor is too expensive, either jobs or workers will move across borders.
The wages some of those unemployed 9% of American programmers want exceed the demand for their labor. Dell sells more PCs than Alienware. That doesn't mean Dell should be restricted from selling its low price PCs so Alienware can sell more of its expensive systems.
I'm not necessarily a total advocate of the way these immigration programs work. But it's better than nothing for foreign workers who get better jobs here. Do you think idle workers in "third world" countries shouldn't be allowed to move to where their skills can be best applied? How can the global economic engine not benefit from India's enormous idle labor pool being put into gear?
So it's not about protectionism, it's about restricting immigration. If the demand for work has dried up here, then what's motivating the immigration? And if immigrants aren't better off here (because of "indentured servant conditions"), then why aren't they staying in their homeland?
Take this with a grain of salt... but it may be possible that your weltanschauung isn't at the same level as your programming skill. You could have the technical acumen of Linus Torvalds, but if you didn't have his ambition, drive, optimism, or charisma, you might still languish. Being a foreigner also has its downsides. You make it sound like being a greybeard is an insurmountable handicap. There are successful people in the software world who've overcome bigger hindrances.
Try reading the "personal productivity" section of this website and see if it doesn't change your outlook. Joel (from JoelOnSoftare.com) recommended this site, and it motivated me out of the doldrums.
Why can't we have an infinite amount of jobs: digging holes and then filling them in again, counting the grains of sand on the beach, or just whistling Dixie all day long? We could outlaw innovation and competition so no job is ever threatened. Maybe we could even ban and destroy technologies that reduce labor: say good riddance to bulldozers, dishwashers, and computers.
I find reading biographies of business leaders to be an inspiring way to avoid the doldrums. For example, read the bio of Howard Shultz (of Starbucks Corp) if you'd like to hear an alternative to sitting around waiting for jobs to drop from the sky.