Most of the civilized (western) world's governments might ask, but can't really get away with telling them they can't do business otherwise (can you picture that press conference? "Yeah, so we have this great new product, but Obama says we can't sell it in the US unless we BCC all your messages to Homeland Security").
*cough* I hear there's this hot new tech company called Napster... *cough*
A company can only "tough it out" so long until they can't afford to stick around.
So what you're saying is, we're now in a global trade environment where no company can survive if it doesn't make dealings with shady, abusive governments? So essentially, the so-called Free World just lost both World War II and the Cold War?
No, teaching is a service provided by the teachers and only paid by the government.
One might think that the people who actually provide the service ought to have some say in how that service is provided, and be given the right to decide whether or not they will provide it to the standard requested of them given the payment and conditions they are offered.
Isn't there a word for that? Something begining with "f"? Something about fries?
Mmm, I can see how that prospect would be very appealing for a nation only just recovering from about a century-and-a-half of dynasty change followed by cultural revolution, and now experiencing its greatest period of peace and growth since forever.
Long term, raising up your neighbors only helps you.
No, it doesn't.
...We've been pumping trillions of dollars into Mexico for decades for economic stability purposes. Mexico is no better off now than it was 50 years ago (arguably, much worse)
So if Mexico is still worse off then it hasn't actually been "raised up" at all, so your point is?
There's a big difference between doing and trying-but-failing (or what might be in the real world, claiming-to-have-tried-while-actually-doing-something-else-and-then-failing).
how can you expect the government to keep track of itself? Maybe if we had a dictator
If the problem is sheer complexity, I'm not sure how even assigning one person to say "Make it so!" would help that person's commands to be actually workable.
Just saying that "if we had a dictator..." isn't really even a good devil's advocate position today. Poor guy would be as screwed as the rest of us.
And they continue to erode the legality of abortion
As somewhat of an outsider to US religious politics, I find it interesting that the civilised West still considers infanticide "wrong" while considering abortion an absolute right. Seems to me, to be really consistent you should make up your mind and either allow both or disallow both. The secular "you're only a human being after birth" argument seems like more magical thinking than the religious argument - as if the act of drawing breath adds a soul which wasn't there at conception. The line between protected citizen and "medical waste" doesn't seem so obviously black and white to me.
But applying logic to this issue seems to be political suicide on the Left for some reason.
4. Environment - A trade off for a better environment is slower growth in overall technology. We are focusing on making what we already have run better without making much that is new.
This one's a good thing, though, right? Rushing to make new stuff that has nasty environmental side effects is like drinking slow poison because it's tasty - initially might seem fun, but you'll pay for it in the end. If a lack of visible innovation is the price we pay for putting our environmental house in order, then I'm all for it.
But I'm not convinced the shift to green sustainable tech is actually happening - at least not fast enough, yet, to forestall the massive declines we're seeing in species diversity and habitat sustainability across the globe. We're still making, eg, new iPads with a 2-3 year lifespan and no obvious plan for cradle-to-grave reuse. That's not doing any favours for our future selves.
Well, guess what? The cheapest one is not made in America.
But that needn't be the case if you implemented some basic requirements on imports: that the companies that produced them have equivalent worker rights, wages, quality and environmental protection measures to US companies. Then set up an international organisation (say the WTO, since they're already in the trade regulation business) to monitor those conditions and enforce compliance.
That wouldn't be protectionism per se - any country who obeyed the same rights/protections regimes could compete - but it would stop the "race to the bottom" effect and would make consumers feel a whole lot safer about their purchases. At the moment, I don't like buying, say, Thai tuna because I feel queasy about how workers are treated in Thailand and whether they have proper sustainable fishing quotas in place. But this would give me assurance that I'm not contributing to slavery or overfishing or toxic spills by buying what's on my supermarket shelves.
Once you had such a regime in place, then the USA would be in the same position as any other country, able to compete on the true merits of their production efficiency without unfairly penalising either labour or the environment.
You've already got the will and the muscle to push through things like international copyright treaties. An international framework like this would merely extend the protections afforded to abstractions like intellectual property, to labour and the environment. You could apply exactly the same arguments and diplomatic pressures to get it done as you do to back WIPO and the like.
What part of this simple, obvious solution is not politically achievable?
how "American Dream" is apparently just another product to sell.
Well, it's not called "the American Reality"...;(
A friend visited New Zealand from Texas the other day. She was saying "You might think you have the poor here, but you guys don't have poverty anywhere near like we have - at least you can live on the welfare in NZ."
The USSR was much more into conquering and exploiting the new frontier and had developed technology with that in mind. Arguably it's a damn good thing they didn't win (from any kind of ethical standpoint) for that very reason. The US got bored silly after "winning"
The real lesson here is "focused, directed work at the goal to get anything done" either needs to get it paid for by someone else like a welfare queen
Yep, that would be what things like the GI Bill and military science programs did for the postwar USA's technological development.
Those lazy, shiftless Greatest Generation welfare queens. Who did they think they were, just because they took a short 1940s European holiday at the taxpayers' expense? Came back all spoiled rotten, expecting the government to give them a house and pay their way through university.
"It is not fair, we can't compete with X" is not the right attitude if you need to compete with X.
Why not?
Why do we need to compete with regimes which use abusively low wages and poor labour conditions, support repressive regimes, and destroy the environment?
Why is "we will refuse to import these products at any price because it is a Faustian bargain and our souls are not for sale" not a perfectly valid and moral answer?
Must all our ethical principles be traded on the open market to the lowest bidder?
WWI (one), which was nothing more than a colossally stupid land-grab with no justification whatsoever
That it was. And we in the British Colonies are all so jolly proud of our part in it that next week we celebrate a particularly pointless mass slaughter which achieved nothing whatsoever.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the civilized (western) world's governments might ask, but can't really get away with telling them they can't do business otherwise (can you picture that press conference? "Yeah, so we have this great new product, but Obama says we can't sell it in the US unless we BCC all your messages to Homeland Security").
*cough* I hear there's this hot new tech company called Napster... *cough*
A company can only "tough it out" so long until they can't afford to stick around.
So what you're saying is, we're now in a global trade environment where no company can survive if it doesn't make dealings with shady, abusive governments? So essentially, the so-called Free World just lost both World War II and the Cold War?
Nice to at least know that we lost, I guess.
At best, it'll mean that Blackberrys get banned in that country
And then the world would know that Blackberries were "too secure for Saudi Arabia". Wouldn't that strengthen their brand?
Look, there's nothing Blackberry can do about it and it's not their job. It's not like they would be able to fight it if USA was the same.
What makes you say "if"?
Not all Americans. Military personell 'enjoy' reduced freedoms.
Yes, and that's a very bad thing.
It's a government provided service
No, teaching is a service provided by the teachers and only paid by the government.
One might think that the people who actually provide the service ought to have some say in how that service is provided, and be given the right to decide whether or not they will provide it to the standard requested of them given the payment and conditions they are offered.
Isn't there a word for that? Something begining with "f"? Something about fries?
Allow them to organize, bargain... Don't allow them to hold school systems hostage when they don't get their way.
So allow teachers' unions to bargain in an organised manner... but don't actually let them have anything to bargain with?
That seems like a perfectly possible thing and not a self-contradiction at all!
I wonder if the same attitude took hold in Britain after WWI. Does an empire in decline *realize* it's in decline?
Pretty much. There's a reason why British TV shows are so bleak and their comedy blacker than black.
Phishers and bank robbers also exist because somebody expects to benefit from those activities.
But you see, phishers actually provide a useful service! They increase, um, market liquidity?
My dad was ridiculed in school in the 1940's for spending his time making model rockets and mutating goldfish with x-rays
Yikes!
Are you sure some of that "ridicule" didn't come from men in black suits wearing three-letter badges? Ridicule or job offers...
(Ve must eliminate the mutant goldfish gap, Mein - er, President!)
Who is John Galt?
The Unabomber with a better haircut.
Were you not alive during the Reagan years? Federal revenues went up due to cuts on the highest marginal rates.
Interesting claim. Citation?
Bloody, and sometimes taking decades
Mmm, I can see how that prospect would be very appealing for a nation only just recovering from about a century-and-a-half of dynasty change followed by cultural revolution, and now experiencing its greatest period of peace and growth since forever.
But hey, freedom, I guess?
Long term, raising up your neighbors only helps you.
No, it doesn't.
...We've been pumping trillions of dollars into Mexico for decades for economic stability purposes. Mexico is no better off now than it was 50 years ago (arguably, much worse)
So if Mexico is still worse off then it hasn't actually been "raised up" at all, so your point is?
There's a big difference between doing and trying-but-failing (or what might be in the real world, claiming-to-have-tried-while-actually-doing-something-else-and-then-failing).
how can you expect the government to keep track of itself? Maybe if we had a dictator
If the problem is sheer complexity, I'm not sure how even assigning one person to say "Make it so!" would help that person's commands to be actually workable.
Just saying that "if we had a dictator..." isn't really even a good devil's advocate position today. Poor guy would be as screwed as the rest of us.
And they continue to erode the legality of abortion
As somewhat of an outsider to US religious politics, I find it interesting that the civilised West still considers infanticide "wrong" while considering abortion an absolute right. Seems to me, to be really consistent you should make up your mind and either allow both or disallow both. The secular "you're only a human being after birth" argument seems like more magical thinking than the religious argument - as if the act of drawing breath adds a soul which wasn't there at conception. The line between protected citizen and "medical waste" doesn't seem so obviously black and white to me.
But applying logic to this issue seems to be political suicide on the Left for some reason.
4. Environment - A trade off for a better environment is slower growth in overall technology. We are focusing on making what we already have run better without making much that is new.
This one's a good thing, though, right? Rushing to make new stuff that has nasty environmental side effects is like drinking slow poison because it's tasty - initially might seem fun, but you'll pay for it in the end. If a lack of visible innovation is the price we pay for putting our environmental house in order, then I'm all for it.
But I'm not convinced the shift to green sustainable tech is actually happening - at least not fast enough, yet, to forestall the massive declines we're seeing in species diversity and habitat sustainability across the globe. We're still making, eg, new iPads with a 2-3 year lifespan and no obvious plan for cradle-to-grave reuse. That's not doing any favours for our future selves.
Why do you think the key to greatness is class envy?
Because "envy" is what criminals call their victim's desire for justice, and no nation can be great without first being just.
Well, guess what? The cheapest one is not made in America.
But that needn't be the case if you implemented some basic requirements on imports: that the companies that produced them have equivalent worker rights, wages, quality and environmental protection measures to US companies. Then set up an international organisation (say the WTO, since they're already in the trade regulation business) to monitor those conditions and enforce compliance.
That wouldn't be protectionism per se - any country who obeyed the same rights/protections regimes could compete - but it would stop the "race to the bottom" effect and would make consumers feel a whole lot safer about their purchases. At the moment, I don't like buying, say, Thai tuna because I feel queasy about how workers are treated in Thailand and whether they have proper sustainable fishing quotas in place. But this would give me assurance that I'm not contributing to slavery or overfishing or toxic spills by buying what's on my supermarket shelves.
Once you had such a regime in place, then the USA would be in the same position as any other country, able to compete on the true merits of their production efficiency without unfairly penalising either labour or the environment.
You've already got the will and the muscle to push through things like international copyright treaties. An international framework like this would merely extend the protections afforded to abstractions like intellectual property, to labour and the environment. You could apply exactly the same arguments and diplomatic pressures to get it done as you do to back WIPO and the like.
What part of this simple, obvious solution is not politically achievable?
the reality of effectively adding 6 billion people to your economy in the space of 10 years is a hardship.
Why a hardship? All those people aren't going to just sit on their hands and break stuff, right?
how "American Dream" is apparently just another product to sell.
Well, it's not called "the American Reality"... ;(
A friend visited New Zealand from Texas the other day. She was saying "You might think you have the poor here, but you guys don't have poverty anywhere near like we have - at least you can live on the welfare in NZ."
Makes me cry.
The USSR was much more into conquering and exploiting the new frontier and had developed technology with that in mind. Arguably it's a damn good thing they didn't win (from any kind of ethical standpoint) for that very reason. The US got bored silly after "winning"
"With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it, and we're going to keep it." -- Keith R Hall, NRO Director, 1997
Nope, no "conquering" attitude there, at all.
The real lesson here is "focused, directed work at the goal to get anything done" either needs to get it paid for by someone else like a welfare queen
Yep, that would be what things like the GI Bill and military science programs did for the postwar USA's technological development.
Those lazy, shiftless Greatest Generation welfare queens. Who did they think they were, just because they took a short 1940s European holiday at the taxpayers' expense? Came back all spoiled rotten, expecting the government to give them a house and pay their way through university.
I blame the French.
"It is not fair, we can't compete with X" is not the right attitude if you need to compete with X.
Why not?
Why do we need to compete with regimes which use abusively low wages and poor labour conditions, support repressive regimes, and destroy the environment?
Why is "we will refuse to import these products at any price because it is a Faustian bargain and our souls are not for sale" not a perfectly valid and moral answer?
Must all our ethical principles be traded on the open market to the lowest bidder?
WWI (one), which was nothing more than a colossally stupid land-grab with no justification whatsoever
That it was. And we in the British Colonies are all so jolly proud of our part in it that next week we celebrate a particularly pointless mass slaughter which achieved nothing whatsoever.
Good show chaps! Keep up the good work, what!