Protecting the US oil markets from foreign competition, especially with oil at its highest price ever, with only greater demand, and shifts in supply, ahead, is a prime responsibility in protecting America's security.
I demand a cost/benefit analysis. $400 billion spent on defense each year, along with the deadweight loss of those taxes, could buy a lot of oil. I belive the US only spends about $100 billion a year on imported oil.
If there is really a risk to oil supply, why do countries which have almost no military expenditures pay the same price for oil that everyone else does?
The US is certainly carrying on a lot of wars right now, but it is foolish to believe that they are in any way benefitting us from an oil supply perspective. Perhaps they are eliminating terrorism and ending corrupt dictatorships, but I don't think they are helping in terms of oil, if anything, they are raising the price of oil.
the Chinese Communist mafia, which is looking to take oil away from the US everywhere it can
Unocal's oil and gas holdings do not belong to "The US", they belong to the shareholders of the company. Obviously Unocal shareholders believe that $20 billion is more than the net present value of future oil profits (plus risks), or why would they be willing to sell at that price?
To say that Unocal's assets belong to the US is socialism.
I can't believe that you really believe that "it doesn't matter who owns the rights".
Well, I do, because it doesn't matter. Oil is a global commodity, priced pretty much the same everywhere.
If you don't protect your country's ability to provide oil here, we're going to look a lot like Europe's economy, with its oil purchasing disadvantages. Starting with $5-10:gallon gas, and all the way to all our industries going to countries with cheap labor and cheaper oil.
European consumers of oil pay the same price that American consumers of oil do. The reason why gasoline costs $5-$10 a gallon in Europe is due to taxation of gasoline at the pump.
US gasoline taxes are about $0.50 per gallon. In Europe, gasoline taxes are $2 to $3 per gallon.
European countries such as Germany and France have economic problems, but they are mainly due to restrictive labor laws and higher levels of taxation (aka, socialism). It is not due to differential availability of oil. Supertankers can go from anywhere, to anywhere.
How did keeping CNOOC from buying Unocal help American markets and consumers?
Seems to me it just screwed Unocal stockholders, and upset the Chinese government at a time when Walmart and CityBank are trying to expand in China. Great going Congress!
Oil is a global commodity. It really doesn't matter who owns what rights. The only people who can actually influence its price are two or three countries in the Middle East, but as the price goes up they actually lose control because other previously unprofitable sources (such as oil sands) come online.
I call North Korea, Cuba, and Iran corrupt states because the leaders of these countries siphon off tremendous amounts of wealth for themselves, much like leaders such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. There is also significant structural corruption by officials of all levels within those countries as well. The fact that they happen to have different political or formal economic systems makes no difference.
Most of Chinese are as poor as ever
No, most Chinese are much less poor than they were 20 years ago. And there are few starvation deaths, unlike the late 1950's in China. They may still be poor, but are getting less poor every year.
In 1950, Chinese income per capita was similar to that of OECD nations in 1500 AD, today it is similar to that of OECD nations in 1917 (good link here)
I certainly would not like to be a worker in the USA in 1917 if I could avoid it, but would prefer it to being a peasant in England in 1500.
the only not corrupted system is USA
Here is the list from Transparency International. There are 18 countries less corrupt than the US (such as Finland, New Zealand, and Denmark).
Intelligent design is just a philosophical addition to biological evolution. It pressuposes biological evolution
ID has more than one belief. The point is that it tries to say thet God exists, and different elements of ID try to use different results to try to prove something between 6-day creationism and evolution plus "there happens to be a God".
A quick look at ID web sites shows that there is no coherency of belief across the movement.
What is the problem with teaching ID? Because it encourages you to stop looking for things like speciation methods, in this example reproductive barriers emerged in populations of butterflies through changes in wing markings.
When we designed the SPARTAN Packet Radio Experiment, we designed and used a microstrip antenna (aka patch antenna) for VHF communications. It makes a lot more sense for a space payload to use patch antennas rather than anything that sticks out of the side of the spacecraft.
Here is a good wideband VHF/UHF microstrip antenna example.
But the west does not refuse doing business with the corrupt governments of those countries.
This is true.
In fact, these corrupt governments are being put in place with the help of western governments that will buy their goods and services in very low prices.
This is not always true. There are plenty of corrupt governments that are kept in place without significant Western trade. They surivive simply through the rents they extract from their own minimal economies.
On the other hand, examples of countries with corrupt governments which the West has tried to avoid trading with (such as North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, and Iran) have not appeared to collapse as a result of a reduction in trade.
Yet at the same time, the government of China, previously one of the most corrupt and economy-destroying, having used central planning to starve tens of millions, has been willing to accept free markets in part due to the willingness of the West to trade with them, leading to amazing economic growth and reduction of poverty in the country.
This seems to suggest that there isn't much the West can do to remove economically destructive governments through trade restrictions, but that trade can provide carrots (even to hardlien Chinese Communists) that can lead governments to create the environments required for effective free market economies.
Most part of the Earth's population still lives with 1 dollar per day
Your statistics are wrong. Current estimates of percent of Earth's population living on $1 per day or below range from 7% to 18%. Snce 1980, the percentage has been cut in half, with most reductions occuring in East Asia (mainly China) and South Asia (mainly India) where 400 million fewer people live under $1 a day now than in 1980. More information is available here.
it true that there are 3rd world countries that are oil and crop producers, yet their native population is dying because wealth is not distibuted amongst them?
It is true that there are 3rd world countries whose governments create barriers to economic growth through corruption, socialism, and over-regulation. These governments are supported financially by foreign aid, debt relief, and in a few instances, oil and other natural resource sales. But the governments also are supported financially by the money they harvest through corruption, even where there is no oil.
It is a bit tough to lay global poverty at the feet of the west, especially the capitalist west, when you see examples of countries finally dropping socialism (be it democratic or authoritarian) and accepting free market reforms and it then leads to hundreds of millions of people leaving absolute poverty (as has happened in post-1980 China and India).
Certainly during the Cold War, developed countries engaged in political support of both pro-US and pro-Soviet dictators in undeveloped countries, but it wasn't like there was any kind of free market supporting democratic alternative, which would have been the only way out of poverty.
Which ignores the reality that most Islamic extremist terrorists that target the West outside of the middle east are actually just spoiled rich kids caught up in anti-Western ideology...
Given the right weather situation (atmospheric inversion layers), you can get some atmospheric ducting. There is also meteor scatter. But both are a little tough to get serious sustained throughput.
So if Cisco has all kinds of security problems, who should we buy routers and switches from? Is there any vendor of network gear that specializes in secure, hardened solutions?
After sampling Sydney radio, I agree there is more diversity than in the US. For example, FBI 94.5 is great.
On the other hand, I am glad the US has FEWER white rappers than Australia. You can't beat the US for hard-urban hip-hop, and there is now plenty of reggaeton as well.
Re:They left out way too much.
on
Top 10 Web Fads
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· Score: 1
I think it is wrong to call LJ, Blogger, Friendster or Homestar Runner a fad. They are still going strong, and who knows how long they will go! On the other hand, everyone knows that Hampsterdance's time has come and gone. Even All Your Base isn't All That Funny any more.
Be careful. I know people who have tried to become teachers. The kids will try to kill you, and you will have almost no way to discipline them. It takes a special kind of person to teach in the US public schools today, more of a prison guard than a professor.
The higher wages of multinationals, of course, does not come from their own generosity, or even out of concern about anti-sweatshop group, but from the simple fact that they are more productive than smaller, less advanced domestic producers in developing countries.
The literature is rich with studies that show higher wages of multinationals:
Even critics of Nike, whose wages and working conditions have become a cause celebre on college campuses, concede that the footwear giant pays higher rates than those prevailing in Asia, where their plants are located. The same pattern is found among multinationals with factories in South America and Eastern Europe.
"The wage differences between multinationals and domestic firms," writes Dan Bernhardt, a University of Illinois economist, "far exceed the differences in rental payments for buildings and land, or prices paid for domestic raw materials by foreign firms compared with their local counterparts."
For example, considering the charge that foreign investment leads to depressed wages and thus exploits "host country" workers, Lipsey finds that the opposite is true. "Within host countries it has been abundantly shown that foreign-owned firms pay higher wages than domestically-owned firms"
You realize that multinationals, including Nike, tend to pay higher wages and have better working conditions than domestic companies in developing countries?
They can do this because they have access to better technology, management, and markets than the domestic industries do, and thus have higher productivity. Thus they pay more, and that is why people flock to work at maquilas.
Look at Johan Norberg's article about Nike workers in Vietnam. For example, they make three times the minimum wage of Vietnamese state-owned industries. The employees talk about how because of these factories, they can now afford to put their children in school, because in the old days they would have to keep the kids working on the farm all day.
There are significant differences between simple sugar based ethanol production and cellulosic ethanol production (based on genetically engineered cellulase enzymes). Iogen has opened up a pilot plant for such cellulosic ethanol a year ago.
In terms of total carbon burden, converting cellulosic biomass to fuel is a benefit, because otherwise this agricultural waste material would be burned off by farmers in the fields, with the energy released going to no work and most of the carbon going into the atmosphere. By capturing the energy for doing work, it reduces total carbon emmissions. Moreover, the waste material is also a fuel used in the production of cellulosic ethanol, reducing the amount of fossil fuels required for its production.
It is silly to grow an energy-intensive food crop to make ethanol, but it makes sense to use existing agricultural waste streams to do so.
Whenever I hear about "sustainable development" talk in developing countries, I think of Robert Mugabe's recent Operation Murambatsvina ("clean up trash") which has evicted at least 300,000 people from their homes in Zimbabwe cities in because they were "slums."
Of course, the real reason for this "urban renewal" is to move opponents to the ruling ZANU PF out of the cities.
Slashdot Mirror
Protecting the US oil markets from foreign competition, especially with oil at its highest price ever, with only greater demand, and shifts in supply, ahead, is a prime responsibility in protecting America's security.
I demand a cost/benefit analysis. $400 billion spent on defense each year, along with the deadweight loss of those taxes, could buy a lot of oil. I belive the US only spends about $100 billion a year on imported oil.
If there is really a risk to oil supply, why do countries which have almost no military expenditures pay the same price for oil that everyone else does?
The US is certainly carrying on a lot of wars right now, but it is foolish to believe that they are in any way benefitting us from an oil supply perspective. Perhaps they are eliminating terrorism and ending corrupt dictatorships, but I don't think they are helping in terms of oil, if anything, they are raising the price of oil.
the Chinese Communist mafia, which is looking to take oil away from the US everywhere it can
Unocal's oil and gas holdings do not belong to "The US", they belong to the shareholders of the company. Obviously Unocal shareholders believe that $20 billion is more than the net present value of future oil profits (plus risks), or why would they be willing to sell at that price?
To say that Unocal's assets belong to the US is socialism.
I can't believe that you really believe that "it doesn't matter who owns the rights".
Well, I do, because it doesn't matter. Oil is a global commodity, priced pretty much the same everywhere.
If you don't protect your country's ability to provide oil here, we're going to look a lot like Europe's economy, with its oil purchasing disadvantages. Starting with $5-10:gallon gas, and all the way to all our industries going to countries with cheap labor and cheaper oil.
European consumers of oil pay the same price that American consumers of oil do. The reason why gasoline costs $5-$10 a gallon in Europe is due to taxation of gasoline at the pump.
US gasoline taxes are about $0.50 per gallon. In Europe, gasoline taxes are $2 to $3 per gallon.
European countries such as Germany and France have economic problems, but they are mainly due to restrictive labor laws and higher levels of taxation (aka, socialism). It is not due to differential availability of oil. Supertankers can go from anywhere, to anywhere.
How did keeping CNOOC from buying Unocal help American markets and consumers?
Seems to me it just screwed Unocal stockholders, and upset the Chinese government at a time when Walmart and CityBank are trying to expand in China. Great going Congress!
Oil is a global commodity. It really doesn't matter who owns what rights. The only people who can actually influence its price are two or three countries in the Middle East, but as the price goes up they actually lose control because other previously unprofitable sources (such as oil sands) come online.
North Korea is not a corrupt state
I call North Korea, Cuba, and Iran corrupt states because the leaders of these countries siphon off tremendous amounts of wealth for themselves, much like leaders such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. There is also significant structural corruption by officials of all levels within those countries as well. The fact that they happen to have different political or formal economic systems makes no difference.
Most of Chinese are as poor as ever
No, most Chinese are much less poor than they were 20 years ago. And there are few starvation deaths, unlike the late 1950's in China. They may still be poor, but are getting less poor every year.
In 1950, Chinese income per capita was similar to that of OECD nations in 1500 AD, today it is similar to that of OECD nations in 1917 (good link here)
I certainly would not like to be a worker in the USA in 1917 if I could avoid it, but would prefer it to being a peasant in England in 1500.
the only not corrupted system is USA
Here is the list from Transparency International. There are 18 countries less corrupt than the US (such as Finland, New Zealand, and Denmark).
Intelligent design is just a philosophical addition to biological evolution. It pressuposes biological evolution
ID has more than one belief. The point is that it tries to say thet God exists, and different elements of ID try to use different results to try to prove something between 6-day creationism and evolution plus "there happens to be a God".
A quick look at ID web sites shows that there is no coherency of belief across the movement.
What is the problem with teaching ID? Because it encourages you to stop looking for things like speciation methods, in this example reproductive barriers emerged in populations of butterflies through changes in wing markings.
Your high school student created proteins from the Miller Experiment? (As opposed to amino acids?) Write that one up!
When we designed the SPARTAN Packet Radio Experiment, we designed and used a microstrip antenna (aka patch antenna) for VHF communications. It makes a lot more sense for a space payload to use patch antennas rather than anything that sticks out of the side of the spacecraft.
Here is a good wideband VHF/UHF microstrip antenna example.
But the west does not refuse doing business with the corrupt governments of those countries.
This is true.
In fact, these corrupt governments are being put in place with the help of western governments that will buy their goods and services in very low prices.
This is not always true. There are plenty of corrupt governments that are kept in place without significant Western trade. They surivive simply through the rents they extract from their own minimal economies.
On the other hand, examples of countries with corrupt governments which the West has tried to avoid trading with (such as North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, and Iran) have not appeared to collapse as a result of a reduction in trade.
Yet at the same time, the government of China, previously one of the most corrupt and economy-destroying, having used central planning to starve tens of millions, has been willing to accept free markets in part due to the willingness of the West to trade with them, leading to amazing economic growth and reduction of poverty in the country.
This seems to suggest that there isn't much the West can do to remove economically destructive governments through trade restrictions, but that trade can provide carrots (even to hardlien Chinese Communists) that can lead governments to create the environments required for effective free market economies.
Most part of the Earth's population still lives with 1 dollar per day
Your statistics are wrong. Current estimates of percent of Earth's population living on $1 per day or below range from 7% to 18%. Snce 1980, the percentage has been cut in half, with most reductions occuring in East Asia (mainly China) and South Asia (mainly India) where 400 million fewer people live under $1 a day now than in 1980. More information is available here.
it true that there are 3rd world countries that are oil and crop producers, yet their native population is dying because wealth is not distibuted amongst them?
It is true that there are 3rd world countries whose governments create barriers to economic growth through corruption, socialism, and over-regulation. These governments are supported financially by foreign aid, debt relief, and in a few instances, oil and other natural resource sales. But the governments also are supported financially by the money they harvest through corruption, even where there is no oil.
It is a bit tough to lay global poverty at the feet of the west, especially the capitalist west, when you see examples of countries finally dropping socialism (be it democratic or authoritarian) and accepting free market reforms and it then leads to hundreds of millions of people leaving absolute poverty (as has happened in post-1980 China and India).
Certainly during the Cold War, developed countries engaged in political support of both pro-US and pro-Soviet dictators in undeveloped countries, but it wasn't like there was any kind of free market supporting democratic alternative, which would have been the only way out of poverty.
Which ignores the reality that most Islamic extremist terrorists that target the West outside of the middle east are actually just spoiled rich kids caught up in anti-Western ideology...
Given the right weather situation (atmospheric inversion layers), you can get some atmospheric ducting. There is also meteor scatter. But both are a little tough to get serious sustained throughput.
So if Cisco has all kinds of security problems, who should we buy routers and switches from? Is there any vendor of network gear that specializes in secure, hardened solutions?
I know plenty of people who are below the poverty line in the US who are Internet users...
I continue to be amazed at the power of distributed computation on the Internet - especially when people are the processors, and porn is the fuel!
Check out the open source Cinelerra HD Editor. Also there is a company, Linux Media Arts that specializes in broadcast video solutions with Linux.
After sampling Sydney radio, I agree there is more diversity than in the US. For example, FBI 94.5 is great.
On the other hand, I am glad the US has FEWER white rappers than Australia. You can't beat the US for hard-urban hip-hop, and there is now plenty of reggaeton as well.
I think it is wrong to call LJ, Blogger, Friendster or Homestar Runner a fad. They are still going strong, and who knows how long they will go! On the other hand, everyone knows that Hampsterdance's time has come and gone. Even All Your Base isn't All That Funny any more.
Oh like Jennicam shouldn't be on the top 10 web fad list!
There are plenty of nice suburban high schools
The experience of people I know who have worked in "nice suburban high schools" is that there are still plenty of nasty kids in there.
Maybe I'll take the cbest and teach CS.
Be careful. I know people who have tried to become teachers. The kids will try to kill you, and you will have almost no way to discipline them. It takes a special kind of person to teach in the US public schools today, more of a prison guard than a professor.
The higher wages of multinationals, of course, does not come from their own generosity, or even out of concern about anti-sweatshop group, but from the simple fact that they are more productive than smaller, less advanced domestic producers in developing countries.
The literature is rich with studies that show higher wages of multinationals:
'Technological competition' causes U.S. multinationals to pay more
Even critics of Nike, whose wages and working conditions have become a cause celebre on college campuses, concede that the footwear giant pays higher rates than those prevailing in Asia, where their plants are located. The same pattern is found among multinationals with factories in South America and Eastern Europe.
"The wage differences between multinationals and domestic firms," writes Dan Bernhardt, a University of Illinois economist, "far exceed the differences in rental payments for buildings and land, or prices paid for domestic raw materials by foreign firms compared with their local counterparts."
Effects of Multinational Company Investments
For example, considering the charge that foreign investment leads to depressed wages and thus exploits "host country" workers, Lipsey finds that the opposite is true. "Within host countries it has been abundantly shown that foreign-owned firms pay higher wages than domestically-owned firms"
The Effects of Multinational Production on Wages and Working Conditions in Developing Countries
This evidence indicates that multinational firms routinely provide higher wages and better working conditions than their local counterparts
You realize that multinationals, including Nike, tend to pay higher wages and have better working conditions than domestic companies in developing countries?
They can do this because they have access to better technology, management, and markets than the domestic industries do, and thus have higher productivity. Thus they pay more, and that is why people flock to work at maquilas.
Look at Johan Norberg's article about Nike workers in Vietnam. For example, they make three times the minimum wage of Vietnamese state-owned industries. The employees talk about how because of these factories, they can now afford to put their children in school, because in the old days they would have to keep the kids working on the farm all day.
There are significant differences between simple sugar based ethanol production and cellulosic ethanol production (based on genetically engineered cellulase enzymes). Iogen has opened up a pilot plant for such cellulosic ethanol a year ago.
In terms of total carbon burden, converting cellulosic biomass to fuel is a benefit, because otherwise this agricultural waste material would be burned off by farmers in the fields, with the energy released going to no work and most of the carbon going into the atmosphere. By capturing the energy for doing work, it reduces total carbon emmissions. Moreover, the waste material is also a fuel used in the production of cellulosic ethanol, reducing the amount of fossil fuels required for its production.
It is silly to grow an energy-intensive food crop to make ethanol, but it makes sense to use existing agricultural waste streams to do so.
Whenever I hear about "sustainable development" talk in developing countries, I think of Robert Mugabe's recent Operation Murambatsvina ("clean up trash") which has evicted at least 300,000 people from their homes in Zimbabwe cities in because they were "slums."
Of course, the real reason for this "urban renewal" is to move opponents to the ruling ZANU PF out of the cities.
My relatives from El Salvador get sick in the US sometimes when they drink water as well...