Actually, corporate accountability isn't hard to enforce. It's just that our government chooses not to enforce it.
I watched a fantastic commentary on this very fact on none-other than Chappell's Show. He did a great skit where a successful white businessmen was treated to the justice system for blacks, and then contrasted it with a crack dealer getting treated to the justice system of white businessmen.
The contrast was comical, but rang so true.
The core issue is that the government decides that some corporations are "too important to fail", like WorldCom. And then they will give massive bailouts and bankruptcy protection to the company. This has two effects. First, it gives a great incentive to cheat and get away with it... even if most of the people involved get sent away, you could easily plea bargin your way into millions. Second, it teaches everyone (customers) that they don't need to be concerned with the integrity of corporations that they deal with. Does your communications company cook the books? Who cares? You won't miss a day of service either way.
Corporate accountability isn't hard to enforce at all. You just have to make corporations responsible for their actions. As it is now, once you get big enough, you don't even have to write the rules. You can just ignore the rules and trust that the government will rewrite them for you whenever you get in trouble.
I didn't assert my findings as fact. Simpily the current results of research. Also, I wasn't using my assertion to prove any point, only to provide a counter example.
If he does have some examples or evidence, I'd love to read it to further my studies. If not, then I'll just consider it an unbased claim. I'm not trying to prove anything, and if he doesn't want to answer, that's fine too.
"In the early days of America we experimented with privately held roads and bridges. It sucked. It sucked a lot. Socialism is the only really workable way to deal with such infrastructure."
Prove this. I've been researching on the topic and I have to say that I've found the exact opposite was true: there were few, if any failures in private infrastructure, the infrastructure was better cared for, and more diverse (ala, not just highways).
Do you have anything to back this up, or is this just a baseless assertion?
Secondly, todays educational institutions (most of them anyway) are cheap shams of what they once were. Going to university used to mean a period of hardship and disconnection from your old life where you were shaped into a person who cherished academics, tradition, service, honor and culture.
We call that indoctrination. And I promise that current universities are still trying to indoctrinate students, but you're missing the real purpose of "going to a university".
The classes and curriculum are but one part of the "university experiance". Far greater life lessons are learned from peers and out-of-class activities than are learned in the classroom.
Classes and a certain amount of "social disconnect" is great for learning technical information, but lively discussions and intellectual stimulation outside of class is really what makes or breaks an institution.
I originally found it amazing how many of our great minds in this world arose not from textbooks, but from coffee shops and lunch breaks at universities with a certain amount of intellectual density.
The fact that collegiate education is going downhill is undeniable, and difficult to handle. But it's the out of class personal growth that enables some students to succeed despite the system. Take away that social aspect, and you would be stuck with the worst extreme. Exclusively State ran, State funded indoctrination.
If you're looking for the golden age of universities, look back when all schools were private.
That is exactly right. DOOM3 was never vaporware. Not only should one consider the E3 demo, what about at QuakeCon 2003 just this last summer, where all comers were allowed to play DOOM3 in four player deathmatch mode?
Seriously, I know that DOOM3 isn't vaporware because I've played it alone with like a thousand other people last summer.
Hypocrisy? I don't think that's what's at issue here. I pay my government to be concerned only with those issues that effect me directly.
I don't know enought about the situation with the IRA and England enough to comment on the funding of terrorists by the US government. (I don't completely doubt it, since we've funded plenty of terrorists before, but I don't see what we had to gain from funding the IRA.)
However, while I do believe that terrorism is a fundamentally discusting prospect, I do *not* expect my government to take action unless that terrorism is directed against Americans. It's true that the American government has only taken a serious issue with terrorism recently. And that's exactly as it should be. If it's not in your citizen's best interest to support the US government in it's terrorism crusade, then your government shouldn't agree to help.
(On a side note, while I mention the terrorism crusade... please don't count Iraq in that crusade. I couldn't apologize enough for that tyranny.)
I'm reading the OSX review on Ars, quite enjoying myself, then suddenly I can't make it to page 3. I get "connection failed" messages.
Giving up temporarily, I cruise over to/. to see what's new. Of course, what do I find? The OSX review on Ars at the top of the list.
While I've definitely witnessed the slashdot effect trying to follow links from articles, this is definitely the first time that I've ever been caught in the middle of one.
It's kind of crazy, I didn't think people actually read the articles around here...
The reason that the private sector makes less mistakes is because mistakes actually cost something to those taking action.
See Business. See Business mess up. See Business go out of business. Goodbye Business.
See Government. See government mess up. See government raise taxes. See government mess up. See government raise taxes.
There's also a clear disconnection between those making decisions in the private sector compared to the public sector. To be the "top" in a private sector and thrive year after year, you have to actually be an expert in your field, or at the very least be an amazingly competent individual. To be the "top" in the public sector, you need to have friends and be elected (or appointed). The "friends" get you campaign money, and the populous get you elected. Of course, being elected doesn't mean you're the best for the job, it just means that (in the absolute best case) a majority agreed with your visible agenda.
It's true, the private sector makes mistakes. But unless those private sector participants have buddies in the public sector, they go away and stop punishing the populous for their incompetence. The government won't go away, and this lack of accountability doesn't help.
Any job can be shipped anywhere, but it's not profitable to move all jobs somewhere else. Geographic locations and societal norms create competitive advantages that make buying labor here in the US more profitable than somewhere else for certain kinds of labor.
Other locations have different natural and human resources that make some kinds of productions more profitable somewhere else.
It's not a "drain no matter how you cut it" because those cheap products get sold back to the US. I'm not "bullshitting", and no one needs "bailed out". Bail outs are just income redistribution.
The reason that companies look for cheaper labor is so that they can produce cheaper product. Every dollar they can save is another unit that they can sell for profit.
A common misconception is that companies are the sole beneficiaries of increased revenue. They are already maximizing their profit. It's maxxed out. They will milk every single dollar out of the revenue that they can at any given second. Since companies are already at a maximum profit ratio for their revenue, they need to increase revenue by reducing costs and increasing output.
When these jobs get send over, it's true that some workers will get paid less... but the prices for the products go down as well. Every company that is implementing an IBM solution then saves some money in software costs. Some of that money goes to profit the fat cats, some of that money goes to expand their respective businesses. This growth caused by cheaper prices leads to more and more jobs.
Who loses? The no longer "needed" workers who must retrain and reinvest themselves. Who wins? Everyone else. Cheaper prices for the direct beneficiaries, greater growth for the companies using said products, greater P/E for the stock holders of the beneficiaries, then more jobs for the general workers.
As far as your "investor" class? Look around, we're all around. Pensions and 401k's are the largest block of capital of the planet. In fact, CalPERS typically owns 5% or so of every market in the world. That "investor" class that makes money, yeah, that's all of your workers you say are getting screwed.
This is a New World Order, it's a change from the socialistic trade practices of yesteryear for a time where the individual can do as they see fit.
Some people may be too blind to see the true effects of globalization. Too awed by the very visible negative effects, and too blind to the amazing almost intangible benefits. Everyone that loses a job that can be even kind of blamed on globalization does so, but no one goes to the store and says, "Wow, I'm so happy globalization makes it possible for me to buy three times the goods with my wages then I could have otherwise."
If globalization were truely a race to the bottom that you describe, then prices wouldn't be falling like they have been for ages. If globalization were truely the damning of the poor that you describe, then the liberalization of the Chinese economy would have been a disaster. Instead, 300 MILLION people were brought out of poverty.
300 MILLION. More humans were brought out of poverty by globalization in China alone than the entire population of the US.
The fact is, maybe the US doesn't have a competitive advantage in the basics of computer science as it did before. Then there's no reason to expect that Americans should be flocking in mass to basic computer science jobs. It's just stupid to overpay for labor like that. It's a waste of valuable resources that should be put to good use elsewhere.
So the guy in India, does just as good of a job and is willing to work for tons less... why *wouldn't* he desearve the job?
There's no denying the hardships that could be faced when some of the US programmers find out that their skills are no longer relevent to the desires of the consumer. But the only portion of the entire situation that confuses me is this feeling of entitlement that all people of all nationalities have for the industries that they are currently working in (or their nation currently dominates).
While this is currently facing the computer professionals of the US, it's faced the heavy industries like the steel industries in the past, and it's affected all people across the globe when more efficient production methods were found.
But why does every industry think that it is something special, something different? Every single example of globalization in the past have had two possible outcomes. Jobs are lost, later even more jobs are created. Jobs are protected, even more jobs are lost.
The movement of jobs or the addition of technology is always difficult for those that are directly affected. But when it comes to policy, we need to look at whether our policies will make globalization on the net positive, or negative.
For one of many examples of the damages that protectionism brings, one only has to look back to the us steel protections of the recent past. When the world began to catch up to the steel industry technology of the US, cheaper steel started to flow across our borders. The Steel Unions mobilized, and were able to pass protectionist laws to raise the prices of international steel coming into the US.
18,000 jobs were saved by the lobbying of the steel unions. That's 18,000 hard working Americans that were able to work and feed their families. Jobs were protected. However, over the next ten years, over 46,000 US jobs were lost in the automotive industry. The automotive companies couldn't get enough cheap steel to compete with the foreign car producers. So while 18,000 jobs were saved, 46,000 jobs were lost.
The flight of jobs away from the US is a hard thing for Americans to face, but attempts at protectionism will only delay the pain and make it worse in the end. When faced with the choice of "Bad", and "Really Really Bad", we should take the bad.
Actually, sugar cane is still grown in Hawaii. Surprisingly, sugar is the one of the most subsidised industries in the US. We pay over five times the "world price" for sugar.
Originally it was just to protect sugar growers, but after corn syrup became the number one sugar substitute, it's now used to keep domestic sugar prices higher than corn.
Why would this be that important? Well because the first political primary is in Iowa, of course, corn capital of the world. Historians will look back at the US and wonder why in the hell corn farmers had such a huge impact on the policies of the most powerful nation in the world.
"raising the general standard of living" could certainly be the result of an increased "social safety net". At the simplest, if you take some money from the richest and give it to the poorest, the average family income would be increased.
This is easy to assume, but actual data shows otherwise. As a near perfect example, one can compare Sweden and the US during the 90's and the US to other countries during the 80's. I would recommend reading: this article for illustration. It's obviously from a free market source, but the numbers are clear.
In general, taking from the rich and giving to the poor can only raise the standard of living if all other things remain constant, and only in the short term. Simply because the rich often produce that which raises the standard of living most dramatically.
As a simple example, still taken from this article's research would be the percentage of poor households in the early 1980's that were lacking an indoor flushing toilet, and a fixed shower or bath. 1.8% U.S. poor households were without flushing toilets, 2.7% of poor US households were withing fixed showers or baths. Even the United Kingdom (certainly more liberal, but not by an "unreasonable" amount some would say) has 6% of it's poor without flushing toilets and 4% lacking bathing facilities. The article demonstates a great number more.
The article sites all of it's sources, but just to make sure, my quick bit of data is taken from: Rector, Robert. "How 'Poor' Are America's Poor?" in Julian Simon ed. "The State of Humanity" (Cambridge Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), p. 240-56. Table 24.1
In this case, there's two important facets to consider. The first, is taxation. While the window repairman may very well spend the earned money on productive uses, he won't have as much money to spend as the original wealth owner because he'll have to give a substantial portion of it up to taxes. (sales tax, property tax, income tax, etc.)
The second is qualifing what is considered "more productive" when it comes to spending. Typically in "growth" measurements for an economy, productive is used almost literally, meaning to "produce". At the very least, it means to "value add".
The second doesn't apply directly to the example, because the example is simplified into consumption goods. The more "productive" goods are capital goods (good used to produce other goods), or capital expenditures (buying capital goods, but also buying human resources used for things like R&D and increased efficiency).
So if a country is socking money into welfare and unemployment benefits, that means that people are being taxed to collect that money. That money may have been an R&D budget, or a new factory, or a new computer system to increase efficiency.
What the oster was proposing, was that by removing some of the "uncertainty" or "cyclical nature" of the economy by massive mandatory taxation for welfare and unemployment benefits, that was making a "better" economy.
If by "better" economy you mean one that's safer for all workers that find themselves out of work, then sure, welfare and unemployment benefits are good.
If you mean "better" for the economy by increasing wealth production, raising the general standard of living, or inciting "growth". Then his statement is obviously false.
Exactly. This is also why the original parent is wrong, when s/he states: "Actually, things like welfare and universal health coverage are good for the economy."
While it may muffle some of the cylic nature of business, it does the exact same thing as the broken window premise.
Money spent on welfare and unemployment is money that would otherwise have been put to more productive uses.
Welfare and unemployment isn't good for the economy, welfare and unemployment is and will always be good for *only* the recipients. If a person wants to argue that welfare and unemployment benefits are a good thing, they should at least be arguing about the real benefit, a kind of social safety net.
Actually, I would consider this proof that Microsoft is *not* a monopoly. They attempted the tried and true method of price-gouging, and they were still defeated by a superior product.
I'm elated that GNU/Linux, OpenOffice, and the essential support contracts from IBM, SuSE, etc, have gotten matured to the point that they can truely compete in a free market.
If this rate of improvement in linux technologies and the related support contracts can be kept up, the dream of a true MS competitor may be in out midst.
I don't consider MS a coercive monopoly myself (not quite anyway, pretty borderline), but I've been waiting for the day that a worthy competitor could be groomed to take on MS in the public and private sector.
I hope those contributing and profiting from gnu/linux keep up the hard work. Once the battle for marketshare really begins in earnest, the competition is only going to get harder and faster.
gl
For those that feel the call of open source ideals and development, wouldn't voting software be a perfect match?
If any application needs to be developed "publicly" with open review and revision, I think it would be this particular application.
Comparing the recycling of paper to the recycling of computer is really missing the entire point.
Don't forget to calculate in the gained efficiencies and waste reductions throughout the entire resource gathering, design, and manufacturing process caused by a "reliance" on high technology.
I'm certain that any ecological damage you'll find from the waste of end user computers will be several orders of magnitude less than the waste reductions and efficiencies (read: astronomical benefits) from our use of high technology in industry.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, corporate accountability isn't hard to enforce. It's just that our government chooses not to enforce it.
I watched a fantastic commentary on this very fact on none-other than Chappell's Show. He did a great skit where a successful white businessmen was treated to the justice system for blacks, and then contrasted it with a crack dealer getting treated to the justice system of white businessmen.
The contrast was comical, but rang so true.
The core issue is that the government decides that some corporations are "too important to fail", like WorldCom. And then they will give massive bailouts and bankruptcy protection to the company. This has two effects. First, it gives a great incentive to cheat and get away with it... even if most of the people involved get sent away, you could easily plea bargin your way into millions. Second, it teaches everyone (customers) that they don't need to be concerned with the integrity of corporations that they deal with. Does your communications company cook the books? Who cares? You won't miss a day of service either way.
Corporate accountability isn't hard to enforce at all. You just have to make corporations responsible for their actions. As it is now, once you get big enough, you don't even have to write the rules. You can just ignore the rules and trust that the government will rewrite them for you whenever you get in trouble.
I didn't assert my findings as fact. Simpily the current results of research. Also, I wasn't using my assertion to prove any point, only to provide a counter example.
If he does have some examples or evidence, I'd love to read it to further my studies. If not, then I'll just consider it an unbased claim. I'm not trying to prove anything, and if he doesn't want to answer, that's fine too.
"In the early days of America we experimented with privately held roads and bridges. It sucked. It sucked a lot. Socialism is the only really workable way to deal with such infrastructure."
Prove this. I've been researching on the topic and I have to say that I've found the exact opposite was true: there were few, if any failures in private infrastructure, the infrastructure was better cared for, and more diverse (ala, not just highways).
Do you have anything to back this up, or is this just a baseless assertion?
We call that indoctrination. And I promise that current universities are still trying to indoctrinate students, but you're missing the real purpose of "going to a university".
The classes and curriculum are but one part of the "university experiance". Far greater life lessons are learned from peers and out-of-class activities than are learned in the classroom.
Classes and a certain amount of "social disconnect" is great for learning technical information, but lively discussions and intellectual stimulation outside of class is really what makes or breaks an institution.
I originally found it amazing how many of our great minds in this world arose not from textbooks, but from coffee shops and lunch breaks at universities with a certain amount of intellectual density.
The fact that collegiate education is going downhill is undeniable, and difficult to handle. But it's the out of class personal growth that enables some students to succeed despite the system. Take away that social aspect, and you would be stuck with the worst extreme. Exclusively State ran, State funded indoctrination.
If you're looking for the golden age of universities, look back when all schools were private.
Seriously, I know that DOOM3 isn't vaporware because I've played it alone with like a thousand other people last summer.
Hypocrisy? I don't think that's what's at issue here. I pay my government to be concerned only with those issues that effect me directly.
I don't know enought about the situation with the IRA and England enough to comment on the funding of terrorists by the US government. (I don't completely doubt it, since we've funded plenty of terrorists before, but I don't see what we had to gain from funding the IRA.)
However, while I do believe that terrorism is a fundamentally discusting prospect, I do *not* expect my government to take action unless that terrorism is directed against Americans. It's true that the American government has only taken a serious issue with terrorism recently. And that's exactly as it should be. If it's not in your citizen's best interest to support the US government in it's terrorism crusade, then your government shouldn't agree to help.
(On a side note, while I mention the terrorism crusade... please don't count Iraq in that crusade. I couldn't apologize enough for that tyranny.)
I didn't even think of that. Thanks for the info.
Giving up temporarily, I cruise over to /. to see what's new. Of course, what do I find? The OSX review on Ars at the top of the list.
While I've definitely witnessed the slashdot effect trying to follow links from articles, this is definitely the first time that I've ever been caught in the middle of one.
It's kind of crazy, I didn't think people actually read the articles around here...
You can't have a legal monopoly if you "just happen to make a product better than anyone else."
Since anti-trust laws specify a monopoly by market share, having a product that is not just marginally better than anyone else is a liability.
That's rediculous.
The reason that the private sector makes less mistakes is because mistakes actually cost something to those taking action.
See Business. See Business mess up. See Business go out of business. Goodbye Business.
See Government. See government mess up. See government raise taxes. See government mess up. See government raise taxes.
There's also a clear disconnection between those making decisions in the private sector compared to the public sector. To be the "top" in a private sector and thrive year after year, you have to actually be an expert in your field, or at the very least be an amazingly competent individual. To be the "top" in the public sector, you need to have friends and be elected (or appointed). The "friends" get you campaign money, and the populous get you elected. Of course, being elected doesn't mean you're the best for the job, it just means that (in the absolute best case) a majority agreed with your visible agenda.
It's true, the private sector makes mistakes. But unless those private sector participants have buddies in the public sector, they go away and stop punishing the populous for their incompetence. The government won't go away, and this lack of accountability doesn't help.
damn it!
boob
Any job can be shipped anywhere, but it's not profitable to move all jobs somewhere else. Geographic locations and societal norms create competitive advantages that make buying labor here in the US more profitable than somewhere else for certain kinds of labor.
Other locations have different natural and human resources that make some kinds of productions more profitable somewhere else.
It's not a "drain no matter how you cut it" because those cheap products get sold back to the US. I'm not "bullshitting", and no one needs "bailed out". Bail outs are just income redistribution.
I'm afraid you'll just have to check your sources. You've been mislead.
No, you have missed the entire point.
The reason that companies look for cheaper labor is so that they can produce cheaper product. Every dollar they can save is another unit that they can sell for profit.
A common misconception is that companies are the sole beneficiaries of increased revenue. They are already maximizing their profit. It's maxxed out. They will milk every single dollar out of the revenue that they can at any given second. Since companies are already at a maximum profit ratio for their revenue, they need to increase revenue by reducing costs and increasing output.
When these jobs get send over, it's true that some workers will get paid less... but the prices for the products go down as well. Every company that is implementing an IBM solution then saves some money in software costs. Some of that money goes to profit the fat cats, some of that money goes to expand their respective businesses. This growth caused by cheaper prices leads to more and more jobs.
Who loses? The no longer "needed" workers who must retrain and reinvest themselves. Who wins? Everyone else. Cheaper prices for the direct beneficiaries, greater growth for the companies using said products, greater P/E for the stock holders of the beneficiaries, then more jobs for the general workers.
As far as your "investor" class? Look around, we're all around. Pensions and 401k's are the largest block of capital of the planet. In fact, CalPERS typically owns 5% or so of every market in the world. That "investor" class that makes money, yeah, that's all of your workers you say are getting screwed.
This is a New World Order, it's a change from the socialistic trade practices of yesteryear for a time where the individual can do as they see fit.
Some people may be too blind to see the true effects of globalization. Too awed by the very visible negative effects, and too blind to the amazing almost intangible benefits. Everyone that loses a job that can be even kind of blamed on globalization does so, but no one goes to the store and says, "Wow, I'm so happy globalization makes it possible for me to buy three times the goods with my wages then I could have otherwise."
If globalization were truely a race to the bottom that you describe, then prices wouldn't be falling like they have been for ages. If globalization were truely the damning of the poor that you describe, then the liberalization of the Chinese economy would have been a disaster. Instead, 300 MILLION people were brought out of poverty.
300 MILLION. More humans were brought out of poverty by globalization in China alone than the entire population of the US.
The fact is, maybe the US doesn't have a competitive advantage in the basics of computer science as it did before. Then there's no reason to expect that Americans should be flocking in mass to basic computer science jobs. It's just stupid to overpay for labor like that. It's a waste of valuable resources that should be put to good use elsewhere.
I don't understand what the complaint is.
So the guy in India, does just as good of a job and is willing to work for tons less... why *wouldn't* he desearve the job?
There's no denying the hardships that could be faced when some of the US programmers find out that their skills are no longer relevent to the desires of the consumer. But the only portion of the entire situation that confuses me is this feeling of entitlement that all people of all nationalities have for the industries that they are currently working in (or their nation currently dominates).
While this is currently facing the computer professionals of the US, it's faced the heavy industries like the steel industries in the past, and it's affected all people across the globe when more efficient production methods were found.
But why does every industry think that it is something special, something different? Every single example of globalization in the past have had two possible outcomes. Jobs are lost, later even more jobs are created. Jobs are protected, even more jobs are lost.
The movement of jobs or the addition of technology is always difficult for those that are directly affected. But when it comes to policy, we need to look at whether our policies will make globalization on the net positive, or negative.
For one of many examples of the damages that protectionism brings, one only has to look back to the us steel protections of the recent past. When the world began to catch up to the steel industry technology of the US, cheaper steel started to flow across our borders. The Steel Unions mobilized, and were able to pass protectionist laws to raise the prices of international steel coming into the US.
18,000 jobs were saved by the lobbying of the steel unions. That's 18,000 hard working Americans that were able to work and feed their families. Jobs were protected. However, over the next ten years, over 46,000 US jobs were lost in the automotive industry. The automotive companies couldn't get enough cheap steel to compete with the foreign car producers. So while 18,000 jobs were saved, 46,000 jobs were lost.
The flight of jobs away from the US is a hard thing for Americans to face, but attempts at protectionism will only delay the pain and make it worse in the end. When faced with the choice of "Bad", and "Really Really Bad", we should take the bad.
Actually, sugar cane is still grown in Hawaii. Surprisingly, sugar is the one of the most subsidised industries in the US. We pay over five times the "world price" for sugar.
Originally it was just to protect sugar growers, but after corn syrup became the number one sugar substitute, it's now used to keep domestic sugar prices higher than corn.
Why would this be that important? Well because the first political primary is in Iowa, of course, corn capital of the world. Historians will look back at the US and wonder why in the hell corn farmers had such a huge impact on the policies of the most powerful nation in the world.
You know, I was curious about this when you said it. So I fired up Winamp 3 and watched the credits.
Approximately 10 seconds into the movie there he is: Justin Frankel, credited with "Additional Programming".
Maybe you should check again?
This is easy to assume, but actual data shows otherwise. As a near perfect example, one can compare Sweden and the US during the 90's and the US to other countries during the 80's. I would recommend reading: this article for illustration. It's obviously from a free market source, but the numbers are clear.
In general, taking from the rich and giving to the poor can only raise the standard of living if all other things remain constant, and only in the short term. Simply because the rich often produce that which raises the standard of living most dramatically.
As a simple example, still taken from this article's research would be the percentage of poor households in the early 1980's that were lacking an indoor flushing toilet, and a fixed shower or bath. 1.8% U.S. poor households were without flushing toilets, 2.7% of poor US households were withing fixed showers or baths. Even the United Kingdom (certainly more liberal, but not by an "unreasonable" amount some would say) has 6% of it's poor without flushing toilets and 4% lacking bathing facilities. The article demonstates a great number more.
The article sites all of it's sources, but just to make sure, my quick bit of data is taken from: Rector, Robert. "How 'Poor' Are America's Poor?" in Julian Simon ed. "The State of Humanity" (Cambridge Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), p. 240-56. Table 24.1
Good question.
In this case, there's two important facets to consider. The first, is taxation. While the window repairman may very well spend the earned money on productive uses, he won't have as much money to spend as the original wealth owner because he'll have to give a substantial portion of it up to taxes. (sales tax, property tax, income tax, etc.)
The second is qualifing what is considered "more productive" when it comes to spending. Typically in "growth" measurements for an economy, productive is used almost literally, meaning to "produce". At the very least, it means to "value add".
The second doesn't apply directly to the example, because the example is simplified into consumption goods. The more "productive" goods are capital goods (good used to produce other goods), or capital expenditures (buying capital goods, but also buying human resources used for things like R&D and increased efficiency).
So if a country is socking money into welfare and unemployment benefits, that means that people are being taxed to collect that money. That money may have been an R&D budget, or a new factory, or a new computer system to increase efficiency.
What the oster was proposing, was that by removing some of the "uncertainty" or "cyclical nature" of the economy by massive mandatory taxation for welfare and unemployment benefits, that was making a "better" economy.
If by "better" economy you mean one that's safer for all workers that find themselves out of work, then sure, welfare and unemployment benefits are good.
If you mean "better" for the economy by increasing wealth production, raising the general standard of living, or inciting "growth". Then his statement is obviously false.
Exactly. This is also why the original parent is wrong, when s/he states: "Actually, things like welfare and universal health coverage are good for the economy."
While it may muffle some of the cylic nature of business, it does the exact same thing as the broken window premise.
Money spent on welfare and unemployment is money that would otherwise have been put to more productive uses.
Welfare and unemployment isn't good for the economy, welfare and unemployment is and will always be good for *only* the recipients. If a person wants to argue that welfare and unemployment benefits are a good thing, they should at least be arguing about the real benefit, a kind of social safety net.
Actually, I would consider this proof that Microsoft is *not* a monopoly. They attempted the tried and true method of price-gouging, and they were still defeated by a superior product. I'm elated that GNU/Linux, OpenOffice, and the essential support contracts from IBM, SuSE, etc, have gotten matured to the point that they can truely compete in a free market. If this rate of improvement in linux technologies and the related support contracts can be kept up, the dream of a true MS competitor may be in out midst. I don't consider MS a coercive monopoly myself (not quite anyway, pretty borderline), but I've been waiting for the day that a worthy competitor could be groomed to take on MS in the public and private sector. I hope those contributing and profiting from gnu/linux keep up the hard work. Once the battle for marketshare really begins in earnest, the competition is only going to get harder and faster. gl
For those that feel the call of open source ideals and development, wouldn't voting software be a perfect match? If any application needs to be developed "publicly" with open review and revision, I think it would be this particular application.
Like, duh. Of course they are all Unix. I suppose we're supposed to say, "petroleum jelly", as well?
Comparing the recycling of paper to the recycling of computer is really missing the entire point.
Don't forget to calculate in the gained efficiencies and waste reductions throughout the entire resource gathering, design, and manufacturing process caused by a "reliance" on high technology.
I'm certain that any ecological damage you'll find from the waste of end user computers will be several orders of magnitude less than the waste reductions and efficiencies (read: astronomical benefits) from our use of high technology in industry.