With globalization companies can use cheaper labor elsewhere to save on these loses which means more unemployed local workers. Its a vicious cycle where eventually the whole system is destroyed internally. Large corporations will survive simply because they, and only they, do not depend on the U.S. for work.
Again, look at the 1970's and early 1980's. If you want an example of a mass exodus of jobs overseas, you can find no better incidence. During this time, we lost a good portion of our heavy industry overseas. Japanese car companies were mopping the floor with the Big 3. Steel was moving out to India. Manufacturing was shipping out en masse to Korea and Taiwan. Unemployment was far higher than anything we saw during this latest recession.
This exodus was destined to occur no matter what. In this case, no amount of trade protectionalism could have stopped it. Yet, jobs came back. Not in the same areas, but they did come back. The end result was the low unemployment and efficient economy of the 1990's. We didn't suffer an economic collapse, as you posit that we would.
Outflows of jobs never have caused any kind of an economic collapse, and they never will. I defy you to show me one example of this vicious cycle.
There. You said it. I was waiting for the "G" word". Global what? No, the constant spin of saying protectionist is bad and globalisation is good is humorous because people such as yourself are completely incapable of finding how this is good for Joe Somebody working over in a steel plant in Ohio who has to go home tommorow and find a new job to feed his family.
Did you read anything that I wrote? Layoffs and jobs moving overseas hurts. IN THE SHORT RUN. But economies need to evolve and move forward. If they don't, they will be left behind. If we still had an economy focused completely on heavy industry, you would not be as well off as you are today. Our exports would be reduced to virtually zero. No one would buy from the U.S. because our goods would be too expensive compared to more competitive countries. This would trigger a bad long-term recession. Jobs would be lost. Wages cut. And, unlike in a free-trade situation, they won't come back.
For a more ancient example of comparative advantage: In the early 1800's, the New England economy was completely based on agriculture. But, eventaully, the soils depleted and the market was flooded with cheap agricultural goods from the South and West. These areas were more suited to agriculture than New England. Many New England farmers failed and became impoverished.
So, did the New Englanders just sit on their asses and keep farming? No. This freeing of resources away from the agricultural sector allowed for a worker surplus. Guess what happened? The industrial revolution. Since 90% of the population wasn't on farms, they could work in the factories.
The 70's and 80's downturn had little to do with industry but rather the country redirecting its focus into a service economy that we have today.
Uh. We now have such a larger service sector because we don't have much in the way of industry.
Your point earlier that we sucked at industry defies history. During WWII the U.S. was in a funk of a recession and it used its industrial might to snuff out two countries that were industrial power houses themselves: Germany ad Japan.
Read my post again. We haven't always sucked at industry. In WWII, we were great at it. The fact that we had such a large industrial base was one of the main reasons we won the war. But we sucked at industry by the 1970's. Thus, many companies packed up and left. That is obvious. The last decade we've had higher growth and lower unemployment than during the 1970's, despite having lost all of those industrial jobs.
Go read this for a basic overview of comparative advantage.
Risking the country on someones guess work has never really done us much good. Look at how well the tech industry went.
Free trade isn't risking the country on somebody's guess work. It is based on the will of the market, which is composed of the people. Do you know hat is based on guess work, though?
That's right. Trade protectionalism. The government interfering in certain industries in a worthless clumsy attempt at helping the economy.
Go speak to any economist. Do it. Any economist. They will invariably tell you that protectionism bites everyone in the ass in the long run.
Very true. It is pretty intuitive. But to many people it is not. Losing jobs sounds bad.
Those who have money already make this transistion more easily than those who do not, which leads to an ever increasing disparity of wealth. This is the real source of complaint.
This is open for debate. Often, the executives and higher-ups of a failing company get the shaft as well. Of course, there has been an increasing disparity of wealth in the past few decades.
You should head down to Stockholm to claim your Nobel Prize, because if you're right, you've disproved one of the most important founding principles of economics. It's universally accepted by Keynesians, monetarists, supply siders, everyone.
Trade protectionism sometimes will not kill an economy. But it contributes to uncompetitiveness on the global market. If we still had an economy based on industry, we would be so uncompetive in that arena compared to countries like China and Indonesia that we would likely be in a long-term recession, much like Japan is suffering now largely due to uncompetitiveness.
BTW: Is it really better to just dump an industry that you may not be the best at and displace 100's of 1000's of people rather than making your country better at that form of production?
You can't just make an economy better in an industry. Suppose I wanted to make the U.S. more competitive in steel production compared to say, India. To do that, I'd have to make mining more efficient, automate factories more, etc. Unless I wanted to lay off all the workers I possibly can, bust unions, and reduce worker benefits, I'm pretty much going to have to spend large amounts of money on capital. Thus, I'm still not competitive. Steel made by highly paid U.S. workers is not competitive.
Thus, the best thing to do would be to allow the free market to dictate what the steel industry does. This would entail some factories closing. But that frees up resources for more productive industries.
Free trade hurts badly in the short run but will produce a vibrant economy that is very competitive in the world market in the long run. It's counterintuitive, but it works.
If you read about what's called comparative advantage, an extremely important economic theory, you would see that trade protectionism is damaging to the economy in the long run.
An economy should focus on producing what it is "least worse" at producing. Any government intervention, through subsidies or tariffs or other means, ultimately damages the economy because it encourages production in innefficient industries. An economy should always focus on productive industries and import everything else.
Take a look at the U.S. in the 70's and 80's. Our economy was based on manufacturing and industry. But we sucked at it. American industry was not competitive on the world market. We had anemic growth and ultra-high unemployment to prove it. So, industry moved overseas. This of course worsened the short-term unemployment problem. It was painful.
But you know what? We're better off without industry. That loss allowed our economy to expand in other areas, such as the tech sector. And now we have lower unemployment and a higher standard of living, too, compared to the 1970's.
Af far as non combustion jet engines go, they tried nuclear ramjets back in the 60's. They actually worked fairly well. Rather than lasers, suppose you had a few megawatts of microwaves being beamed up to a rectenna on an airplane, giving the airplane quite a bit of electrical power. The air in a jet engine could be heated by super-hot heating coils. Or else, you set alight a smallish pilot flame of acetylene or something, and pump the microwaves directly into the combustion chamber. This would create very hot plasma, as the microwaves would be absorbed the the acetylene flame.
If you've ever put a match in a microwave, the conducting flame absorbs the microwaves. This can cause a huge burst of white or blue plasma, often several inches wide and leaping up to the top of the microwave.
You are probably thinking of vacuum tubes, which happen to be a form of CRTs, as they emit electrons from a cathode. These vacuum tubes could function as memory, logic gates, amplifiers (they are still used in a few audio applications) and just about anything else a transistor can do.
Obviously vacuum tubes can't compete with transistors. Transistors are orders of magnitude faster, don't burn out, are cheaper, etc. But, vacuum tubes were sure a hell of an improvement of relays, which were used on a few early computers.
Cellphones? No. Digital Cameras? No. Portable high-quality solid state audio recorders? No. Long-term heart monitors? No.
Actually, your comment is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. It's read only. Didn't you look at the article?
Thus, it would not work for cellphones, digital cameras, audio recorders, or heart attack monitors. However, it would work for portable game systems. They use ROMs as is.
Any mac in the last 3 years can run all but the most demanding FPS game. Get a clue... Try running just the latest version of windows on a 3 year old P(iece of)C(rap).
Actually, I have a computer purchased in 1999 for $800 that runs Windows XP just fine, with only an inexpensive ram upgrade. It also can play UT and UT2003 with the settings low.
I know you are firmly in Steve Job's Reality Distortion Field, but PCs offer better performance for less money, although the 64 bit PPC chips do compete well with Athlon and Intel.
Exiling the wealthy is rare--I have never heard of it before. Sparta is what? Greece I think. Right? Were they practicing DIRECT democracy at that time? I can't see it happening under REPRESENTATIVE democracy or something worse than that. Athens at one point, if I'm not mistaken, had direct democracy so perhaps Sparta as well--not sure.
Sparta was somewhat a direct demoracy, but not in the stle of Athens. It was governed mostly by elder citizens over the age of 30. However, other, unelected oligarchic branches of government held as much sway. Although, it But, unlike the democracy of Athens, Sparta was a true military state. All citizens were taken away as small children and trained for the military. Mothers were proud when their sons were killed in battle.
Sparta was basically continually at war with Athens for a period of about 30 years. Finally, Athens was vanquished in 403 B.C., and its democracy was replaced by the 30 Tyrants. However, the former democratic system was quickly restored.
The discrepancy in wealth will continuously increase under capitalism. There is no way around it because capitalism is an elitist system. All elitist systems result in a few hoarding the wealth. As Marx said, capitalism will collapse when the discrepancy gets so large as to cause a class war. Whether you think Marx was a fool (as capitalists claim) or that he was brilliant (as socialists claim), you have to admit that there is a probability of a class war when the discrepancy in wealth gets very large.
Capitalism is the only mode of production capable of producing our current wealth. Socialism is and always has been a pipe dream. There can never be a class war. Remember that Marx was writing in the mid 19th century. That was when the industrial revolution was in full swing and impoverished workers toiled for 12 hours a day for obscenely wealthy captains of industry.
You don't see that today. There wasn't a class war then, unless you count various union skirmishes and the like. There sure as hell won't be one now or in the future. The present large middle class and small descrepency in wealth is directly linked to capitalism and the high production it caused. Before capitalism, there was only poor peasants and rich lords. The descrepancy may be increasing. But it isn't something to condemn capitalism over.
Ah. I don't so much disagree with you then. The way I see it though, is that Germany is being dragged back to a much more market oriented system, gradually. And of course it is not pretty. Reforms are definitely needed to avert severe economic problems.
Right now, some unionists are rallying behind warning strikes, because the metall industry is offering an 1,2 increase (just around the inflation rate, after years of no increases), but only if the employees accept an unpaid increase in the working hours from 35 to 40 hours a week.
That is pretty unfair. Strong unions, especially in industry, are vital. Hopefully they can get a pay increase. I'm sure you cherish your short work day and long vacations, but such work increases are probably going to have to be necessary in many industries.
With many things, it is a question of what the people want. Perhaps it is better after all for the Germans to take an economic hit to sustain their current system.
But your economy is stagnating and becoming less competive. You have to think in the long term. The German economy is going downhill, albeit slowly. The deep seated problems in the economy cannot be ignored. They will rear their ugly head, unless the German govenrment reforms.
To which I say: A different world is possible. Smash capitalism!
Socialism doesn't work. Germany has done very well because it is only somewhat socialist. It still has large, sucessful corporations that are the backbone of the economy. Without large corporations, the German economy will be nothing. The German government is the key source of stagnation. When corporations are taxed heavily and individuals have their disposable income taken away, it hurts long term growth. The German economy needs investment.
I'd tend to think that a German would be a little less sympathetic towards total socialism. After all, East Germany had a stagnant economy lightyears behind West Germany at the time of reunification. It seems that, especially in the case of Germany, capitalism is by far the better system. Germany's mixed economy is far better than a pure socialist system. But freer is usually better.
But since our state government knows best, it must be done because it has a tremendous ROI.
I too, live in Washington State. We have one of the worst tax climates for businesses in the country, hence Boeing's eagerness to relocate. Basically, we taxed the living hell out of Boeing. When they decidided they wanted to move, the state government gave them ridiculous incentives to get them to stay. But, it was basically too late anyway. Many of the jobs have already relocated to Chicago and Kansas. We'll just have a shell of what we once had. Idiotic beauracracies allowed the lifeblood of the Seattle economy to slip away.
Just be glad that they are easy on corporations. The German economy is headed for a slow, eventual decline due to deep seated structural problems. It will wind up much like Japan. Taxes are too high, and that discourages investment. Productivity isn't that high.
Worse, to help offset the massive government debt, there is talk about raising pension contributions and corporate taxes. These will hurt the economy further, making the country less competitive and decreasing investment.
Germany is falling into a trap. The people have been erroneously led to believe that the state can provide everything, which it cannot, at least in the long term. I don't quite think giving Athlon $683 million for a fab that will only be in operation for a few years is a good idea. But be glad that Siemans pays very little in corporate taxes. It keeps the jobs in Germany rather than in the U.K. or the U.S. You sure as hell don't need more people on the dole.
Dutch is a Germanic language, if I am not mistaken. Does it display more similarities to Latin than English? English does have many latin influences, although its French, Anglo-Saxon, and Celtic influences are greater.
Yes. Well, Dell builds it for cheaper. Selling it is a different matter. I can build a $700 computer that will completely and utterly blow away Dell's comparable offerings.
Computer manufacturers like profit. Their computers typically have a good CPU, but everything else is utter crap. For sub $1000 computers, its always onboard video, 256 ram, crappy mobo, etc.
How? Okay, maybe Bill Gates employs a butler, nanny or gardener or two but what does he bring to the poor in the area?
The incomes of all of the wealthy workers at Redmond. They don't stuff their money under a matress. They buy stuff at 7-11. They have houses built that employ construction workers. They pump millions upon millions into the economy every year. That helps poor people, as well as rich people.
You are damn lucky we have such a good military. The world is. Yes, it isn't perfect. But we've done such things as turn the tide in World War II against Germany and Japan. If it wasn't for us, Britain would have eventually capitulated and been invade. Europe and Russia would be under the rule of the Third Reich. Japan would have kept their Sphere of Prosperity over all of East Asia, killing hundreds of thousands a month. South Korea would be singing hymns to the Dear Leader.
Don't write off our military as evil and terrible based on a few relatively minor incidences. Keep in mind that soldiers go where they are ordered. There are many generals that did not support the Iraqi war. Do not put it at their feet.
Who developed the first incarnation of the internet? Oh, that's right. DARPA. Who funded development of jet engines? The military. The list goes on and on.
Horseshit. Religion in general is the biggest cause of social and mental retardation in history, and more wars and death and killing have been it's result, directly contradicting it's stated goals.
The Catholic Church was insturmental in holding together Western European civilization in the wake of the fallen Roman Empire. It united Christendom, and helped civilize and temper the barbarian hordes. In addition, we have them to thank for preserving ancient literature and learning.
Religion isn't all bad. I'm personally atheist, but its idiotic to paint with such a wide brush. I could call atheists killers and murderers because Stalin and Mao were atheistic communists.
....but who cares? Look at the newsgroup sci.space.tech to realise that the weight of the oxidizer (not fuel!) is largely irrelavent. If you put enough crap in to make a engine that can run from the air from a small amount of time (and rockets try to get out of the atmosphere as quickly as possible) then you've just spent a large part of your weight/complexity/management budget on not much.
That's not entirely correct. The O2 is a third of the mass. Keep in mind that in addition to eliminating the weight of the 02, scramjets push such an amazing amount of air out the back that they are far more efficient than rocket engines.
The main problem with space launches is the initial climb and acceleration, when you are pushing forward all of the craft's stages and fuel. By eliminating the 02, it translates into vastly, vastly smaller requirements.
Better to simply make the fuel and oxidizer tanks bigger (because fuel and oxidizer is -so- much a -tiny- part of a launch cost) and stick bigger engines on it.
Scramjets are far simpler than rocket engines. It would be much cheaper to build boosters that use a scramjet as a first stage as opposed to a rocket engine. The fuel savings, the increased payload, and the cheaper cost all make the scramjet a superior option.
They critize the US very little, while it's the biggest human rights violator.
Yeah. Tell me about it. My whole family was killed by Orin Hatch and his Hutu tribe back in the early 90's. Oh wait.
What the fuck is your problem? How can you say with a straight face that the U.S. is the world's biggest human rights violator? Does George Bush kill tens of thousands of his political opponents? Do we send people off to prison work camps in Alaska? Do we shoot people for drug possesion?
I'm not denying anyone the right to make money, we live in a capitalist society after all... But Gates (and others like him) has billions as a personal fortune that he and his offspring would not be able to spend in the next 100 years, even if they never made any more money at all.
Those personal billions (and I'm not talking about company profits and shareholders) were made out of industries that employ people from communities all over the globe. Yes, those employees made some wealth themselves but what about the less fortunate people in those communities? What about giving up some of that money to fight poverty, especially bearing in mind that corporations moving into communities drive up things like house prices which in turn contribute to poverty.
Are you aware of Bill Gate's intention to give the vast majority of his fortune away? I get the feeling that you view the existence of billionares as somehow detrimental to the poor. I'll talk of Gates to start with. His company has created 6000 millionares. Yes, there are less fortunate people in Redmond, but all of those millionares spending their money has been of great benefit to the poor in those areas.
You will see the same trickle down of wealth when ever a large corporation moves into an area and begins to employ large amounts of people. It is not detrimental at all. The economy needs it.
One of the depressing facts of comp sci is that everything gets copied blind. I have no idea why every 'mejaah player' feels the need to support sixty different 'skins' none of which support the native look and feel of the machine O/S. I'm not a 14 year old kid, I want a tool not a kalaidescope. One of my main pet peeves, as well. When I play DVDs, I use Cyberlink PowerDVD. The included DVD player in Win2k simply isn't very good. However, there are tons of skins for the cyberlink. Yet all of them have microscopic buttons with cryptic symbols on them for controls.
However, for music, I go with Foobar2000. Best media player ever. The entire program is less than a megabyte. It supports ogg, FLAC, APE, anything under the sun. And it has a Windows-style interface that is very functional.
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With globalization companies can use cheaper labor elsewhere to save on these loses which means more unemployed local workers. Its a vicious cycle where eventually the whole system is destroyed internally. Large corporations will survive simply because they, and only they, do not depend on the U.S. for work.
Again, look at the 1970's and early 1980's. If you want an example of a mass exodus of jobs overseas, you can find no better incidence. During this time, we lost a good portion of our heavy industry overseas. Japanese car companies were mopping the floor with the Big 3. Steel was moving out to India. Manufacturing was shipping out en masse to Korea and Taiwan. Unemployment was far higher than anything we saw during this latest recession.
This exodus was destined to occur no matter what. In this case, no amount of trade protectionalism could have stopped it. Yet, jobs came back. Not in the same areas, but they did come back. The end result was the low unemployment and efficient economy of the 1990's. We didn't suffer an economic collapse, as you posit that we would.
Outflows of jobs never have caused any kind of an economic collapse, and they never will. I defy you to show me one example of this vicious cycle.
There. You said it. I was waiting for the "G" word". Global what? No, the constant spin of saying protectionist is bad and globalisation is good is humorous because people such as yourself are completely incapable of finding how this is good for Joe Somebody working over in a steel plant in Ohio who has to go home tommorow and find a new job to feed his family.
Did you read anything that I wrote? Layoffs and jobs moving overseas hurts. IN THE SHORT RUN. But economies need to evolve and move forward. If they don't, they will be left behind. If we still had an economy focused completely on heavy industry, you would not be as well off as you are today. Our exports would be reduced to virtually zero. No one would buy from the U.S. because our goods would be too expensive compared to more competitive countries. This would trigger a bad long-term recession. Jobs would be lost. Wages cut. And, unlike in a free-trade situation, they won't come back.
For a more ancient example of comparative advantage: In the early 1800's, the New England economy was completely based on agriculture. But, eventaully, the soils depleted and the market was flooded with cheap agricultural goods from the South and West. These areas were more suited to agriculture than New England. Many New England farmers failed and became impoverished.
So, did the New Englanders just sit on their asses and keep farming? No. This freeing of resources away from the agricultural sector allowed for a worker surplus. Guess what happened? The industrial revolution. Since 90% of the population wasn't on farms, they could work in the factories.
The 70's and 80's downturn had little to do with industry but rather the country redirecting its focus into a service economy that we have today.
Uh. We now have such a larger service sector because we don't have much in the way of industry.
Your point earlier that we sucked at industry defies history. During WWII the U.S. was in a funk of a recession and it used its industrial might to snuff out two countries that were industrial power houses themselves: Germany ad Japan.
Read my post again. We haven't always sucked at industry. In WWII, we were great at it. The fact that we had such a large industrial base was one of the main reasons we won the war. But we sucked at industry by the 1970's. Thus, many companies packed up and left. That is obvious. The last decade we've had higher growth and lower unemployment than during the 1970's, despite having lost all of those industrial jobs.
Go read this for a basic overview of comparative advantage.
Risking the country on someones guess work has never really done us much good. Look at how well the tech industry went.
Free trade isn't risking the country on somebody's guess work. It is based on the will of the market, which is composed of the people. Do you know hat is based on guess work, though?
That's right. Trade protectionalism. The government interfering in certain industries in a worthless clumsy attempt at helping the economy.
Go speak to any economist. Do it. Any economist. They will invariably tell you that protectionism bites everyone in the ass in the long run.
Very true. It is pretty intuitive. But to many people it is not. Losing jobs sounds bad.
Those who have money already make this transistion more easily than those who do not, which leads to an ever increasing disparity of wealth. This is the real source of complaint.
This is open for debate. Often, the executives and higher-ups of a failing company get the shaft as well. Of course, there has been an increasing disparity of wealth in the past few decades.
You should head down to Stockholm to claim your Nobel Prize, because if you're right, you've disproved one of the most important founding principles of economics. It's universally accepted by Keynesians, monetarists, supply siders, everyone.
Trade protectionism sometimes will not kill an economy. But it contributes to uncompetitiveness on the global market. If we still had an economy based on industry, we would be so uncompetive in that arena compared to countries like China and Indonesia that we would likely be in a long-term recession, much like Japan is suffering now largely due to uncompetitiveness.
BTW: Is it really better to just dump an industry that you may not be the best at and displace 100's of 1000's of people rather than making your country better at that form of production?
You can't just make an economy better in an industry. Suppose I wanted to make the U.S. more competitive in steel production compared to say, India. To do that, I'd have to make mining more efficient, automate factories more, etc. Unless I wanted to lay off all the workers I possibly can, bust unions, and reduce worker benefits, I'm pretty much going to have to spend large amounts of money on capital. Thus, I'm still not competitive. Steel made by highly paid U.S. workers is not competitive.
Thus, the best thing to do would be to allow the free market to dictate what the steel industry does. This would entail some factories closing. But that frees up resources for more productive industries.
Free trade hurts badly in the short run but will produce a vibrant economy that is very competitive in the world market in the long run. It's counterintuitive, but it works.
If you read about what's called comparative advantage, an extremely important economic theory, you would see that trade protectionism is damaging to the economy in the long run.
An economy should focus on producing what it is "least worse" at producing. Any government intervention, through subsidies or tariffs or other means, ultimately damages the economy because it encourages production in innefficient industries. An economy should always focus on productive industries and import everything else.
Take a look at the U.S. in the 70's and 80's. Our economy was based on manufacturing and industry. But we sucked at it. American industry was not competitive on the world market. We had anemic growth and ultra-high unemployment to prove it. So, industry moved overseas. This of course worsened the short-term unemployment problem. It was painful.
But you know what? We're better off without industry. That loss allowed our economy to expand in other areas, such as the tech sector. And now we have lower unemployment and a higher standard of living, too, compared to the 1970's.
Af far as non combustion jet engines go, they tried nuclear ramjets back in the 60's. They actually worked fairly well. Rather than lasers, suppose you had a few megawatts of microwaves being beamed up to a rectenna on an airplane, giving the airplane quite a bit of electrical power. The air in a jet engine could be heated by super-hot heating coils. Or else, you set alight a smallish pilot flame of acetylene or something, and pump the microwaves directly into the combustion chamber. This would create very hot plasma, as the microwaves would be absorbed the the acetylene flame.
If you've ever put a match in a microwave, the conducting flame absorbs the microwaves. This can cause a huge burst of white or blue plasma, often several inches wide and leaping up to the top of the microwave.
You are probably thinking of vacuum tubes, which happen to be a form of CRTs, as they emit electrons from a cathode. These vacuum tubes could function as memory, logic gates, amplifiers (they are still used in a few audio applications) and just about anything else a transistor can do.
Obviously vacuum tubes can't compete with transistors. Transistors are orders of magnitude faster, don't burn out, are cheaper, etc. But, vacuum tubes were sure a hell of an improvement of relays, which were used on a few early computers.
Cellphones? No. Digital Cameras? No. Portable high-quality solid state audio recorders? No. Long-term heart monitors? No.
Actually, your comment is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. It's read only. Didn't you look at the article?
Thus, it would not work for cellphones, digital cameras, audio recorders, or heart attack monitors. However, it would work for portable game systems. They use ROMs as is.
Any mac in the last 3 years can run all but the most demanding FPS game. Get a clue... Try running just the latest version of windows on a 3 year old P(iece of)C(rap).
Actually, I have a computer purchased in 1999 for $800 that runs Windows XP just fine, with only an inexpensive ram upgrade. It also can play UT and UT2003 with the settings low.
I know you are firmly in Steve Job's Reality Distortion Field, but PCs offer better performance for less money, although the 64 bit PPC chips do compete well with Athlon and Intel.
Exiling the wealthy is rare--I have never heard of it before. Sparta is what? Greece I think. Right? Were they practicing DIRECT democracy at that time? I can't see it happening under REPRESENTATIVE democracy or something worse than that. Athens at one point, if I'm not mistaken, had direct democracy so perhaps Sparta as well--not sure.
Sparta was somewhat a direct demoracy, but not in the stle of Athens. It was governed mostly by elder citizens over the age of 30. However, other, unelected oligarchic branches of government held as much sway. Although, it But, unlike the democracy of Athens, Sparta was a true military state. All citizens were taken away as small children and trained for the military. Mothers were proud when their sons were killed in battle.
Sparta was basically continually at war with Athens for a period of about 30 years. Finally, Athens was vanquished in 403 B.C., and its democracy was replaced by the 30 Tyrants. However, the former democratic system was quickly restored.
The discrepancy in wealth will continuously increase under capitalism. There is no way around it because capitalism is an elitist system. All elitist systems result in a few hoarding the wealth. As Marx said, capitalism will collapse when the discrepancy gets so large as to cause a class war. Whether you think Marx was a fool (as capitalists claim) or that he was brilliant (as socialists claim), you have to admit that there is a probability of a class war when the discrepancy in wealth gets very large.
Capitalism is the only mode of production capable of producing our current wealth. Socialism is and always has been a pipe dream. There can never be a class war. Remember that Marx was writing in the mid 19th century. That was when the industrial revolution was in full swing and impoverished workers toiled for 12 hours a day for obscenely wealthy captains of industry.
You don't see that today. There wasn't a class war then, unless you count various union skirmishes and the like. There sure as hell won't be one now or in the future. The present large middle class and small descrepency in wealth is directly linked to capitalism and the high production it caused. Before capitalism, there was only poor peasants and rich lords. The descrepancy may be increasing. But it isn't something to condemn capitalism over.
Ah. I don't so much disagree with you then. The way I see it though, is that Germany is being dragged back to a much more market oriented system, gradually. And of course it is not pretty. Reforms are definitely needed to avert severe economic problems.
Right now, some unionists are rallying behind warning strikes, because the metall industry is offering an 1,2 increase (just around the inflation rate, after years of no increases), but only if the employees accept an unpaid increase in the working hours from 35 to 40 hours a week.
That is pretty unfair. Strong unions, especially in industry, are vital. Hopefully they can get a pay increase. I'm sure you cherish your short work day and long vacations, but such work increases are probably going to have to be necessary in many industries.
With many things, it is a question of what the people want. Perhaps it is better after all for the Germans to take an economic hit to sustain their current system.
But your economy is stagnating and becoming less competive. You have to think in the long term. The German economy is going downhill, albeit slowly. The deep seated problems in the economy cannot be ignored. They will rear their ugly head, unless the German govenrment reforms.
To which I say: A different world is possible. Smash capitalism!
Socialism doesn't work. Germany has done very well because it is only somewhat socialist. It still has large, sucessful corporations that are the backbone of the economy. Without large corporations, the German economy will be nothing. The German government is the key source of stagnation. When corporations are taxed heavily and individuals have their disposable income taken away, it hurts long term growth. The German economy needs investment.
I'd tend to think that a German would be a little less sympathetic towards total socialism. After all, East Germany had a stagnant economy lightyears behind West Germany at the time of reunification. It seems that, especially in the case of Germany, capitalism is by far the better system. Germany's mixed economy is far better than a pure socialist system. But freer is usually better.
But since our state government knows best, it must be done because it has a tremendous ROI.
I too, live in Washington State. We have one of the worst tax climates for businesses in the country, hence Boeing's eagerness to relocate. Basically, we taxed the living hell out of Boeing. When they decidided they wanted to move, the state government gave them ridiculous incentives to get them to stay. But, it was basically too late anyway. Many of the jobs have already relocated to Chicago and Kansas. We'll just have a shell of what we once had. Idiotic beauracracies allowed the lifeblood of the Seattle economy to slip away.
Just be glad that they are easy on corporations. The German economy is headed for a slow, eventual decline due to deep seated structural problems. It will wind up much like Japan. Taxes are too high, and that discourages investment. Productivity isn't that high.
Worse, to help offset the massive government debt, there is talk about raising pension contributions and corporate taxes. These will hurt the economy further, making the country less competitive and decreasing investment.
Germany is falling into a trap. The people have been erroneously led to believe that the state can provide everything, which it cannot, at least in the long term. I don't quite think giving Athlon $683 million for a fab that will only be in operation for a few years is a good idea. But be glad that Siemans pays very little in corporate taxes. It keeps the jobs in Germany rather than in the U.K. or the U.S. You sure as hell don't need more people on the dole.
Dutch is a Germanic language, if I am not mistaken. Does it display more similarities to Latin than English? English does have many latin influences, although its French, Anglo-Saxon, and Celtic influences are greater.
Yes. Well, Dell builds it for cheaper. Selling it is a different matter. I can build a $700 computer that will completely and utterly blow away Dell's comparable offerings.
Computer manufacturers like profit. Their computers typically have a good CPU, but everything else is utter crap. For sub $1000 computers, its always onboard video, 256 ram, crappy mobo, etc.
It has a dvd player. However, it does not have an MPEG 2 codec nor does it license the DVD specs. That stuff has to be purchased seperately.
How? Okay, maybe Bill Gates employs a butler, nanny or gardener or two but what does he bring to the poor in the area?
The incomes of all of the wealthy workers at Redmond. They don't stuff their money under a matress. They buy stuff at 7-11. They have houses built that employ construction workers. They pump millions upon millions into the economy every year. That helps poor people, as well as rich people.
You are damn lucky we have such a good military. The world is. Yes, it isn't perfect. But we've done such things as turn the tide in World War II against Germany and Japan. If it wasn't for us, Britain would have eventually capitulated and been invade. Europe and Russia would be under the rule of the Third Reich. Japan would have kept their Sphere of Prosperity over all of East Asia, killing hundreds of thousands a month. South Korea would be singing hymns to the Dear Leader.
Don't write off our military as evil and terrible based on a few relatively minor incidences. Keep in mind that soldiers go where they are ordered. There are many generals that did not support the Iraqi war. Do not put it at their feet.
Who developed the first incarnation of the internet? Oh, that's right. DARPA. Who funded development of jet engines? The military. The list goes on and on.
Horseshit. Religion in general is the biggest cause of social and mental retardation in history, and more wars and death and killing have been it's result, directly contradicting it's stated goals.
The Catholic Church was insturmental in holding together Western European civilization in the wake of the fallen Roman Empire. It united Christendom, and helped civilize and temper the barbarian hordes. In addition, we have them to thank for preserving ancient literature and learning.
Religion isn't all bad. I'm personally atheist, but its idiotic to paint with such a wide brush. I could call atheists killers and murderers because Stalin and Mao were atheistic communists.
That's not entirely correct. The O2 is a third of the mass. Keep in mind that in addition to eliminating the weight of the 02, scramjets push such an amazing amount of air out the back that they are far more efficient than rocket engines.
The main problem with space launches is the initial climb and acceleration, when you are pushing forward all of the craft's stages and fuel. By eliminating the 02, it translates into vastly, vastly smaller requirements.
Better to simply make the fuel and oxidizer tanks bigger (because fuel and oxidizer is -so- much a -tiny- part of a launch cost) and stick bigger engines on it.
Scramjets are far simpler than rocket engines. It would be much cheaper to build boosters that use a scramjet as a first stage as opposed to a rocket engine. The fuel savings, the increased payload, and the cheaper cost all make the scramjet a superior option.
They critize the US very little, while it's the biggest human rights violator.
Yeah. Tell me about it. My whole family was killed by Orin Hatch and his Hutu tribe back in the early 90's. Oh wait.
What the fuck is your problem? How can you say with a straight face that the U.S. is the world's biggest human rights violator? Does George Bush kill tens of thousands of his political opponents? Do we send people off to prison work camps in Alaska? Do we shoot people for drug possesion?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
I'm not denying anyone the right to make money, we live in a capitalist society after all... But Gates (and others like him) has billions as a personal fortune that he and his offspring would not be able to spend in the next 100 years, even if they never made any more money at all.
Those personal billions (and I'm not talking about company profits and shareholders) were made out of industries that employ people from communities all over the globe. Yes, those employees made some wealth themselves but what about the less fortunate people in those communities? What about giving up some of that money to fight poverty, especially bearing in mind that corporations moving into communities drive up things like house prices which in turn contribute to poverty.
Are you aware of Bill Gate's intention to give the vast majority of his fortune away? I get the feeling that you view the existence of billionares as somehow detrimental to the poor. I'll talk of Gates to start with. His company has created 6000 millionares. Yes, there are less fortunate people in Redmond, but all of those millionares spending their money has been of great benefit to the poor in those areas.
You will see the same trickle down of wealth when ever a large corporation moves into an area and begins to employ large amounts of people. It is not detrimental at all. The economy needs it.
One of the depressing facts of comp sci is that everything gets copied blind. I have no idea why every 'mejaah player' feels the need to support sixty different 'skins' none of which support the native look and feel of the machine O/S. I'm not a 14 year old kid, I want a tool not a kalaidescope.
One of my main pet peeves, as well. When I play DVDs, I use Cyberlink PowerDVD. The included DVD player in Win2k simply isn't very good. However, there are tons of skins for the cyberlink. Yet all of them have microscopic buttons with cryptic symbols on them for controls.
However, for music, I go with Foobar2000. Best media player ever. The entire program is less than a megabyte. It supports ogg, FLAC, APE, anything under the sun. And it has a Windows-style interface that is very functional.
God I hate eye candy.