Say you're in charge of the SWAT team, and you get a 9-1-1 call about intruders shooting people at a house. How do you verify that the reported crime is actually occurring at the address without, you know, going there and checking? Do you send in an unarmed cop to see whether or not there's someone there who's got a gun and is shooting people before sending in your own guys with guns?
I think you're obfuscating a simpler argument on the assumption that the application of a particular tariff is the best course of action according to some general scheme.
Slapping a tariff on American products is a tactical move in an ongoing trade skirmish. We don't have a perfect model for the economics of it, but we don't need one if the imposition of a tariff causes the other side to feel some pain and fold on the issue by either reversing the online gambling law or paying the fine, rather than withdrawing from the WTO altogether.
In other words, a tariff can be locally reasonable and effective even if it's globally irrational. You seem to be saying that tariffs are indefensible within the complete theoretical framework. I'm saying that it's an obvious and workable move in short-sighted, blinkered human relations; it's how things have worked so far, and will probably continue to work.
What works in politics and trade isn't usually mathematically rigorous.
If the U.S. prints enough money to pay off Chinese held bonds, it just devalues the dollar by a similar proportion (in addition to shattering the world's confidence in the USD). You think the U.S. is hurting now with a weak dollar, just try and pull that trick.
There's a simpler effect that you're not mentioning: If a Belgian typically drinks American beer, and the price of it doubles, he'll switch some of his drinking to a cheaper (i.e., local) beer (ignoring tariff taxes going to the Belgian brewers). Tariffs have a simple market effect that is their strength for their immediate purposes.
You're correct in general that protectionist tariffs hurt the local economy in the long run, as do trade wars. But they can be effective as short term maneuvers in a trade war that ultimately corrects a bad actor's initial protectionist moves (like the U.S. did with making it illegal to transfer money to online gambling sites).
If the U.S. won't pay the fine, the WTO can rule that Antigua can punitively ignore commercial treaty obligations like IP obligations (e.g., respecting U.S. copyright), and Antiguan companies can legally create and sell U.S. patented/copyrighted/trademarked stuff, with no legal recourse for the U.S.
It's not about the bling, it's about the American companies that will lose millions to cheap, legal knockoff products.
Do you really believe that she wasn't sharing copyrighted songs? I mean, c'mon... for all our rage against the Gestapo tactics of the RIAA, there's really no doubt here that she was sharing songs, and her "what, little old me?" me didn't fool anyone, even a jury that wasn't particularly techno-saavy.
To adapt your piano analogy a bit: How impoverished are we by the loss of knowledge for building harpsichords?
It's not just that we have enough other instruments, it's that the world of music left behind certain instruments, but still keeps expanding, none the poorer for not having composers still writing symphonies for the muselar. To call the loss of something that passed or is passing naturally out of use a tragedy is to pine for a museum world where nothing is lost but less and less continues to actually live.
No one is saying that we shouldn't retain as much knowledge as possible in archives and libraries and academia. But what more can we do when the Dee-ni in Oregon decide they'd rather learn English than speak in a dying tongue?
I understand the arguments of linquists and ethnosocialogists and whatnot, but I don't really see how much we're losing.
Yes, other languages express concepts that can't be expressed perfectly in ours, which implies different mindsets and cultural outlooks. But how different is that really, and how much of a loss? Does losing a particular micronesian language mean that life's answers might have disappeared? That the formula for peace in the Middle East was in our grasp but is now gone? How big a deal would it be to lose french, beyond having to use 'free' instead of 'gratuit' or 'libre' depending on our intent?
As far as I can tell (and I've studied the philosophy of language, so I'm not totally ignorant here) it's like losing a couple shades of grey out of a nearly infinite spectrum. When that loss is the natural result of the evolution of human societies, I have a hard time seeing the importance of it.
This isn't really compelling to me since, without the secret knowledge they've encoded in micro-languages, we've far surpassed those cultures in medicine, science, navigation, etc... They may know a particular plant that cures the gout, but we've got protein-folding. I'm just convinced there's a real loss here.
A conversation is just a thread, yes, but what was innovative was google's non-tree method of grouping them, and making that the basis of the email interface. Usenet accomplished this with headers, and displayed it in a tree mode that wasn't particularly good, imho, at sorting things tidily into piles based on most recent update. I'm not aware of any email program that operates like gmail does (rather than simply offering an option to sort an flat mailbox by subject). I could be wrong, though.
For a phone, yes, of course you won't get the massive subsidies on the phone that they offer as an inducement to sign a contract. I'm talking about the monthly rate.
You can argue about whether or not 'conversation based' organization was revolutionary or merely innovative, but it is a pretty significant departure from how everyone organizes email in every other program. I think gmail is the best simply for that feature alone.
The only feature I'd like to see next is the ability to combine arbitrary emails into one conversation, but since their way of doing it is some slightly clever regexing on the subject line, I don't think it's possible.
Just go talk to an actual reseller--when they hit you with a plan, say "no, I want to pay month-to-month." You'll pay a bit more, probably, but no lock-in. They're required by law to provide services without requiring a time commitment.
I think the fact that some of the points made are not as scandalous today as they may have been a few decades from now may have something to do with it.
That's a big part of it: in the 50s and 60s they were pretty radical ideas.
But there's no getting around the fact that, for all his intelligence, he was a pedantic windbag, a quality that got worse with his success and the inability of editors to rein in his prose. I didn't even get a quarter of the way into The Lives Of Lazerus Long.
I don't work in publishing, and I don't intend to defend the book industry from charges of price gouging (of which they've been repeatedly guilty in the past), but I remember an O'Reilly blogger talking about the production pipeline for their books being at around six months long.
I know from my own experience in plastics manufacturing that once production decisions are made, mid-stream changes are costly and difficult and typically avoided if at all possible. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the price differential was set when the dollar was $0.85, the artwork committed, and the printing presses rolling. Last month's exchange rate is probably two or three months too late to make a non-costly change in the publishing of the book.
I used to work for a plastics manufacturer in the U.S. Both us and our competitors manufactured most of it in the U.S.--Rubbermaid, Iris, Sterilite... The rising cost of labour and production was offset by the cost of importing low density/low cost equivalents from China, and by automation in American factories. Also, the reliability and availability of sufficient-quality raw materials in the U.S. was far greater than in China. Overall, it was a bit of wash between manufacturing plastics here and there, with the advantage to local manufacturers in the U.S. because of tooling production for just-in-time manufacturing and low inventory costs.
Unless the foreign manufactured product is a high cost/high density item like a laptop, where the air freight cost is a minimal portion of it, shipping the product is literally shipping it, taking 4-6 weeks to cross the Pacific, which incurs significant costs in order fulfillment and inventory management.
The hysteria about the flight of manufacturing from the U.S. isn't entirely wrong, but it's far too simplistic. Lots of basic good manufacturing still goes on here, and the devalued USD definitely favours that.
One clarification to my point below: this situation is caused by the lag in production with respect to changing currency exchange rates, and will shortly work itself out by bring the CAD price closer to or identical with the USD price. But there's an unavoidable lag, and someone eats that cost. And it's the nature of business that it gets passed down to the smallest, least powerful player.
My suggestion is simply that, if you want to help out the small businessman who serves you directly, and who's suffering from a larger economic effect than he can meaningfully affect, you can do so with relatively minor pain by paying the higher price for a short time.
I think you're mistaken; this has nothing to do with production costs, and everything to do with the change in the relative value of the currencies involved. The comic store bought from a distributor who charged them a price based on the difference in currency 3-6 months ago at least--the comics store isn't the one establishing the difference in price due to non-par currencies, it was established long before it got to them. By selling now at par, they're the one eating that difference in price rather than the customer.
Ultimately, that market will decide, and a comics store that sells at par is taking a hard step to keep their customers until the situation works itself out. But don't kid yourself that the comic store isn't suffering from the change in the value of the CAD against the USD by doing this, and as a small business, that suffering can be fatal.
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You actually want Kevin Anderson to leave his poop trailings all over a Star Wars TV show? His rape of the Dune universe wasn't sufficient?
Well, after the first three I suppose the whole property can't be any more degraded...
Say you're in charge of the SWAT team, and you get a 9-1-1 call about intruders shooting people at a house. How do you verify that the reported crime is actually occurring at the address without, you know, going there and checking? Do you send in an unarmed cop to see whether or not there's someone there who's got a gun and is shooting people before sending in your own guys with guns?
I think you're obfuscating a simpler argument on the assumption that the application of a particular tariff is the best course of action according to some general scheme.
Slapping a tariff on American products is a tactical move in an ongoing trade skirmish. We don't have a perfect model for the economics of it, but we don't need one if the imposition of a tariff causes the other side to feel some pain and fold on the issue by either reversing the online gambling law or paying the fine, rather than withdrawing from the WTO altogether.
In other words, a tariff can be locally reasonable and effective even if it's globally irrational. You seem to be saying that tariffs are indefensible within the complete theoretical framework. I'm saying that it's an obvious and workable move in short-sighted, blinkered human relations; it's how things have worked so far, and will probably continue to work.
What works in politics and trade isn't usually mathematically rigorous.
If the U.S. prints enough money to pay off Chinese held bonds, it just devalues the dollar by a similar proportion (in addition to shattering the world's confidence in the USD). You think the U.S. is hurting now with a weak dollar, just try and pull that trick.
There's a simpler effect that you're not mentioning: If a Belgian typically drinks American beer, and the price of it doubles, he'll switch some of his drinking to a cheaper (i.e., local) beer (ignoring tariff taxes going to the Belgian brewers). Tariffs have a simple market effect that is their strength for their immediate purposes.
You're correct in general that protectionist tariffs hurt the local economy in the long run, as do trade wars. But they can be effective as short term maneuvers in a trade war that ultimately corrects a bad actor's initial protectionist moves (like the U.S. did with making it illegal to transfer money to online gambling sites).
If the U.S. won't pay the fine, the WTO can rule that Antigua can punitively ignore commercial treaty obligations like IP obligations (e.g., respecting U.S. copyright), and Antiguan companies can legally create and sell U.S. patented/copyrighted/trademarked stuff, with no legal recourse for the U.S.
It's not about the bling, it's about the American companies that will lose millions to cheap, legal knockoff products.
That wasn't just unfunny, but painfully so. Try this:
Imagine a beowulf cluster of legal gambling sites!
Do you really believe that she wasn't sharing copyrighted songs? I mean, c'mon... for all our rage against the Gestapo tactics of the RIAA, there's really no doubt here that she was sharing songs, and her "what, little old me?" me didn't fool anyone, even a jury that wasn't particularly techno-saavy.
To adapt your piano analogy a bit: How impoverished are we by the loss of knowledge for building harpsichords?
It's not just that we have enough other instruments, it's that the world of music left behind certain instruments, but still keeps expanding, none the poorer for not having composers still writing symphonies for the muselar. To call the loss of something that passed or is passing naturally out of use a tragedy is to pine for a museum world where nothing is lost but less and less continues to actually live.
No one is saying that we shouldn't retain as much knowledge as possible in archives and libraries and academia. But what more can we do when the Dee-ni in Oregon decide they'd rather learn English than speak in a dying tongue?
I understand the arguments of linquists and ethnosocialogists and whatnot, but I don't really see how much we're losing.
Yes, other languages express concepts that can't be expressed perfectly in ours, which implies different mindsets and cultural outlooks. But how different is that really, and how much of a loss? Does losing a particular micronesian language mean that life's answers might have disappeared? That the formula for peace in the Middle East was in our grasp but is now gone? How big a deal would it be to lose french, beyond having to use 'free' instead of 'gratuit' or 'libre' depending on our intent?
As far as I can tell (and I've studied the philosophy of language, so I'm not totally ignorant here) it's like losing a couple shades of grey out of a nearly infinite spectrum. When that loss is the natural result of the evolution of human societies, I have a hard time seeing the importance of it.
I mean, I'm just *not* convinced.
It would have been clearer if I could have expressed it in my native tongue of kurgurkistani, but no one else understands it anymore...
This isn't really compelling to me since, without the secret knowledge they've encoded in micro-languages, we've far surpassed those cultures in medicine, science, navigation, etc... They may know a particular plant that cures the gout, but we've got protein-folding. I'm just convinced there's a real loss here.
A conversation is just a thread, yes, but what was innovative was google's non-tree method of grouping them, and making that the basis of the email interface. Usenet accomplished this with headers, and displayed it in a tree mode that wasn't particularly good, imho, at sorting things tidily into piles based on most recent update. I'm not aware of any email program that operates like gmail does (rather than simply offering an option to sort an flat mailbox by subject). I could be wrong, though.
For a phone, yes, of course you won't get the massive subsidies on the phone that they offer as an inducement to sign a contract. I'm talking about the monthly rate.
You can argue about whether or not 'conversation based' organization was revolutionary or merely innovative, but it is a pretty significant departure from how everyone organizes email in every other program. I think gmail is the best simply for that feature alone.
The only feature I'd like to see next is the ability to combine arbitrary emails into one conversation, but since their way of doing it is some slightly clever regexing on the subject line, I don't think it's possible.
Just go talk to an actual reseller--when they hit you with a plan, say "no, I want to pay month-to-month." You'll pay a bit more, probably, but no lock-in. They're required by law to provide services without requiring a time commitment.
Don't forget "not exactly planned but nonetheless helpful publicity" media storms.
That's a big part of it: in the 50s and 60s they were pretty radical ideas.
But there's no getting around the fact that, for all his intelligence, he was a pedantic windbag, a quality that got worse with his success and the inability of editors to rein in his prose. I didn't even get a quarter of the way into The Lives Of Lazerus Long.
Treat it as constructive criticism (which it was). A little extra effort polishing the prose usually pays off with interest.
Your essay would have more credibility without the spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Print on demand publishing would certainly be an answer to this sort of problem, though.
I don't work in publishing, and I don't intend to defend the book industry from charges of price gouging (of which they've been repeatedly guilty in the past), but I remember an O'Reilly blogger talking about the production pipeline for their books being at around six months long.
I know from my own experience in plastics manufacturing that once production decisions are made, mid-stream changes are costly and difficult and typically avoided if at all possible. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the price differential was set when the dollar was $0.85, the artwork committed, and the printing presses rolling. Last month's exchange rate is probably two or three months too late to make a non-costly change in the publishing of the book.
I used to work for a plastics manufacturer in the U.S. Both us and our competitors manufactured most of it in the U.S.--Rubbermaid, Iris, Sterilite... The rising cost of labour and production was offset by the cost of importing low density/low cost equivalents from China, and by automation in American factories. Also, the reliability and availability of sufficient-quality raw materials in the U.S. was far greater than in China. Overall, it was a bit of wash between manufacturing plastics here and there, with the advantage to local manufacturers in the U.S. because of tooling production for just-in-time manufacturing and low inventory costs.
Unless the foreign manufactured product is a high cost/high density item like a laptop, where the air freight cost is a minimal portion of it, shipping the product is literally shipping it, taking 4-6 weeks to cross the Pacific, which incurs significant costs in order fulfillment and inventory management.
The hysteria about the flight of manufacturing from the U.S. isn't entirely wrong, but it's far too simplistic. Lots of basic good manufacturing still goes on here, and the devalued USD definitely favours that.
One clarification to my point below: this situation is caused by the lag in production with respect to changing currency exchange rates, and will shortly work itself out by bring the CAD price closer to or identical with the USD price. But there's an unavoidable lag, and someone eats that cost. And it's the nature of business that it gets passed down to the smallest, least powerful player.
My suggestion is simply that, if you want to help out the small businessman who serves you directly, and who's suffering from a larger economic effect than he can meaningfully affect, you can do so with relatively minor pain by paying the higher price for a short time.
I think you're mistaken; this has nothing to do with production costs, and everything to do with the change in the relative value of the currencies involved. The comic store bought from a distributor who charged them a price based on the difference in currency 3-6 months ago at least--the comics store isn't the one establishing the difference in price due to non-par currencies, it was established long before it got to them. By selling now at par, they're the one eating that difference in price rather than the customer.
Ultimately, that market will decide, and a comics store that sells at par is taking a hard step to keep their customers until the situation works itself out. But don't kid yourself that the comic store isn't suffering from the change in the value of the CAD against the USD by doing this, and as a small business, that suffering can be fatal.