How about just a voice recorder. Many PDA's now come with that option too. No time to write notes? Just voice your notes on your way from port to starboard. But you can also do that with a cell phone and a large voicemail account. Transcribe messages when you get home or try to get your favorite voice recognition software to jumble them for you.
Did you miss the part about the energy? Space activity takes a lot of energy. With the same amount of energy that you send equipment to a nearby meteor, you could have simply extracted these resources from the earth itself. But this apparently lacks the kind of gee-whiz factor that people think is worth subjugating energy rich nations for.
resourcesHave you any idea what kind of resources are in space? Everything you could ever want (Iron, nickel, cobalt, platinum-group metals, He-3) in effectively infinite supply. And because there's no tectonic motions or air resistance (and because we live at the bottom of a gravity well) it costs almost nothing to harvest, and is in extremely pure forms. The value of one asteroid is over $10 TRILLION. How's that return for a $10 billion investment?
The problem of course is that for the energy needed to divert the orbit of a suitable asteroid to earth, you could get all of those resources on earth.
The resource industrial societies prize the most is energy and in present day earth usable energy is in the form of petroleum. As far as we know, there is no petroleum in space and if there were, it would be quite a challenge to make it net energy positive.
Nobody with any common sense is arguing against space exploration, but there are better ways to spend our money than to send people up there.
Stupid Government regulations would sadly kill any such venture.....
If the government is of, for and by the people then you're at fault. Thanks a lot buddy. You're killing our private space program.
Licensing isn't the barrier for these programs. It's not like 80% of funding is going for government licenses.
You can't expect air space to be completely unregulated. Like it would really be to the advantage of the X-prize contestants to risk their prototype barreling through a 747 fuselage. Wake up.
Not to mention that the list of accomplishments, however debatable it may be, should really come with a giant past performance does not guarantee future results disclaimer.
The most frustrating thing about this kind of garbage is that the same people who expound how the internet and technology in general have "changed the rules" of the economy when it comes to P/E ratios and growth ability tend to be the same ones who then turn around and say that this "new economy" will be just like the old economy when it comes to the domestic employment market. Let's all have our cake and eat it too before reality sets in.
The truth is quite the opposite. While economic growth is really tied to new wealth generation, barriers for job migration have been lowered by technological advances. Add new locations of value creation to the same old economy and you see that what previously was a national labor market has become a global one. Those with lowest cost of living gain absolute advantage.
The real problem with Rambus was the they were competing in a market space against the very same companies that they required to make their products. Had they found the fab capacity to pump out RDRAM, it is very likely that prices would have come down. Technical advantage of RDRAM could then compete against DDRAM memory made by Infineon and others.
This problem was evident from day one. The fact that they didn't go through the trouble to secure independent production capacity to keep the other manufacturers honest just goes to show that they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. Doing so would have slimmed RDRAM profit margins but definitely insured that lack of supply doesn't kill their product.
It's a case of greed ruining their business model.
I'm surprised that Intel bought into this mess. Just goes to show that for all their glitz, Intel can be a bunch of geeks sometimes.
I think corporations should cover their own costs. BUT, if it were between paying corporations for R&D vs. paying people, which was the argument you presented, I will choose the former.
Legislating for fair labor practices does not equate to "paying people" since there is no government expense other than administrative costs of enforcement which can easily be recovered through fines for failure to comply. Paying corporations for R&D on the other hand incurs immediate expense to the public and has no legitimate justification other than the application of Keynesianism during economic recession.
The fault is not with a teacher's salary, it is the structure of government funded and administered education.
You either believe in supply and demand or you don't. You can't say that given poor demand you will get choice supply unless you invent a system of getting top notch educators to work for little compensation. I would say that's a characteristic of a command economy.
My wife works in the public school system but not for the public school system. I share her opinion that, contrary to popular rhetoric, elementary educational bureaucracy is quite good. It is rather the talent and amount of it that schools can access that hinders America's children. You get what you pay for. Corporations routinely justify astronomical CEO compensation by saying that they are trying to attract top talent. So guess what crappy compensation gets you.
Becaues we've had the past century to prove that command economies fail, and free markets (of labor and corporations) make a country thrive.
This is another instance of the tired "free market economies defeated command economies in a cage match" rhetoric. First of all, there is no clear demarcation between command and free market economies. It's a continuous spectrum and countries now admittedly free market have been command economies in the past. The US is a prime example, reverting to a command economy during WW2 and again reviving some command economy policies as late as the Nixon administration. Japan has continuously commanded their economy at a high level from WW2 on through institutions like MITI. South Korea and Singapore among other Asian Tigers are also examples of succesful economies with heavy centralized influence. China, despite reforms, continues to be a command economy today achieving growth rates which reliably embarrass free market proponents. The famous example of the collapse of the Soviet Union was achieved through a sustained arms race and a final death blow to their currency via oil price manipulation. This was a competition waged in the geopolitical sphere and not a true contest between economies.
Because we've read Hayek and Friedman and Rand and Postrel, and you apparently haven't.
True, I have not read Hayek, Rand and Postrel.
Because I have come to these conclusions from personal experience, where as the system you would like has never been achieved. This means both that it is probably unattainable and also that you have the luxury of living in an ivory tower, where your ideas needn't be demonstrated as successful to be given credit in the real world.
Free market capitalism has fallen on its face most spectacularly where the Washington consensus was given free hand at implementing it, namely Chile, Poland and Russia. Russia has been so incredibly devastated by its policies that suspicion is being raised that it was a form of insurance for America in eliminating a central power on the Eurasian landmass. If America truly exports free market capitalism and this economic system actually generates wealth then one is left wondering why America's immediate sphere of influence economies have done so poorly. Central America is a mess and South America hasn't even scratched its potential with all of the resources on that continent.
the benefit of subsidizing new research, at the university level or at a corporation: everyone who uses that research.
Why do you expect employees to train and retrain themselves at a cost to them but on the other hand believe that corporations should not have to pay to develop the products and services that they profit from?
Why is Barrett complaining about teachers being incompetent when the education system is paying them wages that could only attract people who are incompetent or find it their life's calling?
Why do people parrot ignorant bullshit they heard someone else parrot?
Why am I so pissed at ignorance when it's as abundant as the air we breathe?
Since when is it the government's job to secure a CEO's ass by subsidizing R&D. Barret says,
Another significant area is research and development (R&D) investment that is government funded. If you look at the fraction of output in the U.S. that has gone to R&D -- especially physical sciences -- it has been in decline for two decades. R&D creates the ideas for future products and services.
This guy is all free market when it comes to jobs other than his own, and all socialized government funded nanny state shit when it's his own job. Do you think those future products and services that he's talking about are going to benefit American employees when they are being outsourced?
It's a class war. At least the labor side is looking for a fair deal while capital is after old fashioned subsidies and new rights to exploit.
No, because I only have my minions submit things for me to read which fit my preconceived notions lest I explode with rage and direct other minions to skewer the fallible.
I didn't even post this message. It was posted for me with my approval.
You must be a person of great and untouchable power to discuss my personal habits in open forum like this. Yet, it was a good precaution to post as AC because it will give you several hours head start. Pray that my short attention will divert the industry of my minions to other tasks.
But, as is common in this type of research, due to the extreme variations in performance from project to project, it is hard to draw any definite conclusions.
And of all the praise they lavish on Japan and Indian the conclusion brings it back to reality with:
It is important to remember, as well, that no Indian or Japanese company has yet to make any real global mark in widely-recognized software innovation, which has long been the province of U.S. and a few European software firms.
You can invent cheap energy but you can't change human nature. The battleground would simply switch to where Palladium is found most abundant, Australia, South Africa and Russia.
If you're concerned about solving the world's problems then work on genetically engineering people to be altruistic. This way the few non-altruists could take advantage of them without conflict and social stability could last eons. Read Huxley's "A Brave New World" for an example of how this would work.
The oil companies produce energy from oil for one thing. "To make money"
They are always interested in other ways to produce portable energy. If there is a way to do the same thing they are doing now cheaper, of course they want in on it. And they want to be first in line.
You just contradicted yourself. The oil companies want to make money but they already invested tons of their money in finding, acquiring and developing huge petroleum reserves and have already borrowed against the value of those reserves to get their end product to market so abandoning these reserves for other technologies is going to lose them money by the boatloads. Most of the interest these companies take in alternative energy sources is so that they can have control over this technology. If it nets them some favorable PR and their dollar can be compounded by public funding then so much the better.
Thinking that this technology is going to be put to use before the grandsons of Standard Oil run their reserves dry (to zero net energy yield actually), is crazy talk.
Outsourcing looks great until it hits a critical point where consumer purchasing power falls below price deflation. Will corporations then reverse their trend and start bringing jobs back to the US because the economy has stalled for lack of demand?
For every $10 an hour job you replace with a $0.10 an hour job, you destroy $9.90 worth of demand. This is OK if the person previously earning $10 an hour is able to re-employ because if he gets another job for $10 an hour then overall world product has risen by the amount of the outsourced job, $0.10, and this is a net gain for everyone. If the person retrains and re-employs at a higher wage, then America benefits as well for the small price of retraining. The problem starts when re-employment occurs at a lower wage and the shit really hits the fan when no re-employment occurs.
In the past, when low skill jobs were being outsourced and Americans retrained, this actually worked in their favor because for the cost of retraining, world product rose as low skilled employment went abroad but low skilled employment in the US was replaced by higher skilled employment for the one time cost of retraining. This is pretty simplified but can under other conditions generate economic growth on both sides.
The problem now is that jobs of all skill and educational levels can be outsourced. This means that a factory worker earning $20 an hour can be replaced for $0.50 an hour and any potential job that this person could have retrained to can also be replaced for a lower cost job overseas. This is not a growth engine. It is simple job substitution. Companies profit as long as the price difference between US jobs and overseas jobs allows for a greater profit margin, but profits return to normal once outsourcing has been tapped and prices have been deflated. At that point however American consumer purchasing power has collapsed and world demand for all those outsourced products has been decimated since populations in nations participating in outsourcing don't earn anywhere near what American consumers who are now jobless earned. There's no force that could adjust this back to normal because no company is going to be willing to be the first to start hiring Americans back to get demand started again. This can only happen after Americans have suffered enough hardship to legislate against such practices.
In the meantime, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer (statistics mislead here because the average income doesn't need to change at all for this to happen because it is median income that does the shifting, but most people don't understand mean and median the difference between these two) and Americas infrastructure has taken a huge hit as federal and state tax revenues fall in line with wages, since US tax revenue is predominantly wage based. The huge trade deficits America has continued with outsourced nations will have tanked the dollar and energy costs will skyrocket. It will now be nearly impossible to bring industry back to the US and since military might follows economic might, US power will be marginalized across the globe. Somewhere along this journey, the dollar will be replaced by the Euro as the currency of choice for oil and the impotent American military will be powerless to stop it. America will suffer a major economic heart attack as dollar reserves are dumped by banks across the world to facilitate trading in Euros. It will then be left dealing with an Ultra-Great Depression without any means of financing its way out because of the huge national debt. This may very well lead to the collapse of the federal government resembling the Soviet downfall.
Production technology differences across industries and across countries are reflected in labor productivity parameters.
The modern world has made it possible to match productivities between two countries. Therefore, there would be no reason to pay a worker in the US $20/hour when a worker in China can be made to be nearly as productive for $1/hour with the same capital investment that made the US worker that productive. This means that no country has a comparative advantage over another. There is only the absolute advantage of lowered labor cost. This was not even remotely possible in Ricardo's age and hence does not figure into the comparative advantage theory. It was simply safe to make that assumption.
The question that outsourcing begs is, "What happens to the world economy when you deflate America's capacity to consume by reducing the purchasing power of its formerly well compensated labor force?" Done on a small scale, it's a benefit to whatever business that profits from the ability to manufacture with low labor costs and sell at high prices, but done on a large scale labor costs remain about the same if rising slightly but the ability to sell at the same high price is no longer possible because the former consumer base has been eroded. It's the Henry Ford principle of paying high wages to sell expensive items such has cars, turned on its head. Americans will no longer be able to afford the same products that they could when they were fully employed before.
A harsh loss for America but an unpleasant loss for the world as well.
"standard of living" being lots of vacation and little work
Why would you glorify producing little with lots of work? You certainly didn't hand write your slashdot submissions with ink on a piece of vellum, but are apparently very angry at progress. If less people produce the same GDP, then those employed work more and others go unemployed. Welcome higher crime rates, social unrest and wasted GDP that comes with both. Those employed are also less involved in the democratic process, raising their kids or retraining and learning because they're at work more.
Rather than shouting "nationalist," I would rather you just say "thank you" and be on your way.
they might have nice, socialist CEO pay, but they also have the othger inevitable trappings of socialism: No abundance of capital, poor standard of living, no innovation, inefficiency, less consumer choice, and less freedom
In GDP per hour worked, the US ranks third behind Germany and France and this is not even a fair comparison for the average citizen of each nation given that the Gini index is so high for the US. You have apparently never experienced what a 35hour work week with 6 weeks of vacation can do for your standard of living. Or the fact that a lot of personal earnings in the US are consumed by the cost of health care which is a standard benefit for citizens of other nations.
I don't know of a good measure for consumer choice but having travelled to both Germany and Japan myself, it is my personal experience that consumer choice is equal to that of the US. Some areas fare better while others do not.
Comparing productivity levels among the G7 nations blows your inefficiency argument out of the water.
Why would we compare such an economic powerhouse to the machinations of other inefficient economic weaklings of the world?
Living in a fantasy of American exceptionalism is becoming harder every year. It never ceases to amuse me how much effort people will expend on stroking their nationalism.
If you believe that the election dollar beggars that make up the nation's politicians are the ruling class, then you are apparently quite susceptible to the media.
In America particularly, the government really is for the people and by the people by definition, but this still leaves most of us to question who exactly these people that the government is "for and by" are.
So why was this "real value" generally in line with that of other advanced industrialized nations for nearly 40 years and then suddenly unhinged in the 90's to climb to the staggering heights today?
Every economist they interview should be asked the following question, "Extending current trends in outsourcing what will the American economy look like and what will the world economy look like as a result in the next several decades?"
Really? Then how do you explain the ratio of CEO pay to average employee pay being an order of magnitude higher in the US than in other advanced industrialized countries?
Slashdot Mirror
How about just a voice recorder. Many PDA's now come with that option too. No time to write notes? Just voice your notes on your way from port to starboard. But you can also do that with a cell phone and a large voicemail account. Transcribe messages when you get home or try to get your favorite voice recognition software to jumble them for you.
Did you miss the part about the energy? Space activity takes a lot of energy. With the same amount of energy that you send equipment to a nearby meteor, you could have simply extracted these resources from the earth itself. But this apparently lacks the kind of gee-whiz factor that people think is worth subjugating energy rich nations for.
The resource industrial societies prize the most is energy and in present day earth usable energy is in the form of petroleum. As far as we know, there is no petroleum in space and if there were, it would be quite a challenge to make it net energy positive.
Nobody with any common sense is arguing against space exploration, but there are better ways to spend our money than to send people up there.
Think of the audience for this report. Cheney may read it to Bush at some point.
Licensing isn't the barrier for these programs. It's not like 80% of funding is going for government licenses.
You can't expect air space to be completely unregulated. Like it would really be to the advantage of the X-prize contestants to risk their prototype barreling through a 747 fuselage. Wake up.
The most frustrating thing about this kind of garbage is that the same people who expound how the internet and technology in general have "changed the rules" of the economy when it comes to P/E ratios and growth ability tend to be the same ones who then turn around and say that this "new economy" will be just like the old economy when it comes to the domestic employment market. Let's all have our cake and eat it too before reality sets in.
The truth is quite the opposite. While economic growth is really tied to new wealth generation, barriers for job migration have been lowered by technological advances. Add new locations of value creation to the same old economy and you see that what previously was a national labor market has become a global one. Those with lowest cost of living gain absolute advantage.
This problem was evident from day one. The fact that they didn't go through the trouble to secure independent production capacity to keep the other manufacturers honest just goes to show that they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. Doing so would have slimmed RDRAM profit margins but definitely insured that lack of supply doesn't kill their product.
It's a case of greed ruining their business model.
I'm surprised that Intel bought into this mess. Just goes to show that for all their glitz, Intel can be a bunch of geeks sometimes.
Legislating for fair labor practices does not equate to "paying people" since there is no government expense other than administrative costs of enforcement which can easily be recovered through fines for failure to comply. Paying corporations for R&D on the other hand incurs immediate expense to the public and has no legitimate justification other than the application of Keynesianism during economic recession.
You either believe in supply and demand or you don't. You can't say that given poor demand you will get choice supply unless you invent a system of getting top notch educators to work for little compensation. I would say that's a characteristic of a command economy.
My wife works in the public school system but not for the public school system. I share her opinion that, contrary to popular rhetoric, elementary educational bureaucracy is quite good. It is rather the talent and amount of it that schools can access that hinders America's children. You get what you pay for. Corporations routinely justify astronomical CEO compensation by saying that they are trying to attract top talent. So guess what crappy compensation gets you.
This is another instance of the tired "free market economies defeated command economies in a cage match" rhetoric. First of all, there is no clear demarcation between command and free market economies. It's a continuous spectrum and countries now admittedly free market have been command economies in the past. The US is a prime example, reverting to a command economy during WW2 and again reviving some command economy policies as late as the Nixon administration. Japan has continuously commanded their economy at a high level from WW2 on through institutions like MITI. South Korea and Singapore among other Asian Tigers are also examples of succesful economies with heavy centralized influence. China, despite reforms, continues to be a command economy today achieving growth rates which reliably embarrass free market proponents. The famous example of the collapse of the Soviet Union was achieved through a sustained arms race and a final death blow to their currency via oil price manipulation. This was a competition waged in the geopolitical sphere and not a true contest between economies.
True, I have not read Hayek, Rand and Postrel.
Free market capitalism has fallen on its face most spectacularly where the Washington consensus was given free hand at implementing it, namely Chile, Poland and Russia. Russia has been so incredibly devastated by its policies that suspicion is being raised that it was a form of insurance for America in eliminating a central power on the Eurasian landmass. If America truly exports free market capitalism and this economic system actually generates wealth then one is left wondering why America's immediate sphere of influence economies have done so poorly. Central America is a mess and South America hasn't even scratched its potential with all of the resources on that continent.
But
Why is Barrett complaining about teachers being incompetent when the education system is paying them wages that could only attract people who are incompetent or find it their life's calling?
Why do people parrot ignorant bullshit they heard someone else parrot?
Why am I so pissed at ignorance when it's as abundant as the air we breathe?
It's a class war. At least the labor side is looking for a fair deal while capital is after old fashioned subsidies and new rights to exploit.
I didn't even post this message. It was posted for me with my approval.
You must be a person of great and untouchable power to discuss my personal habits in open forum like this. Yet, it was a good precaution to post as AC because it will give you several hours head start. Pray that my short attention will divert the industry of my minions to other tasks.
And of all the praise they lavish on Japan and Indian the conclusion brings it back to reality with:
If you're concerned about solving the world's problems then work on genetically engineering people to be altruistic. This way the few non-altruists could take advantage of them without conflict and social stability could last eons. Read Huxley's "A Brave New World" for an example of how this would work.
Thinking that this technology is going to be put to use before the grandsons of Standard Oil run their reserves dry (to zero net energy yield actually), is crazy talk.
For those without kids, there are "undocumented house servants" aka illegal immigrants.
The question I have is how much more efficient is this process than thermal depolymerization of the same feedstock?
For every $10 an hour job you replace with a $0.10 an hour job, you destroy $9.90 worth of demand. This is OK if the person previously earning $10 an hour is able to re-employ because if he gets another job for $10 an hour then overall world product has risen by the amount of the outsourced job, $0.10, and this is a net gain for everyone. If the person retrains and re-employs at a higher wage, then America benefits as well for the small price of retraining. The problem starts when re-employment occurs at a lower wage and the shit really hits the fan when no re-employment occurs.
In the past, when low skill jobs were being outsourced and Americans retrained, this actually worked in their favor because for the cost of retraining, world product rose as low skilled employment went abroad but low skilled employment in the US was replaced by higher skilled employment for the one time cost of retraining. This is pretty simplified but can under other conditions generate economic growth on both sides.
The problem now is that jobs of all skill and educational levels can be outsourced. This means that a factory worker earning $20 an hour can be replaced for $0.50 an hour and any potential job that this person could have retrained to can also be replaced for a lower cost job overseas. This is not a growth engine. It is simple job substitution. Companies profit as long as the price difference between US jobs and overseas jobs allows for a greater profit margin, but profits return to normal once outsourcing has been tapped and prices have been deflated. At that point however American consumer purchasing power has collapsed and world demand for all those outsourced products has been decimated since populations in nations participating in outsourcing don't earn anywhere near what American consumers who are now jobless earned. There's no force that could adjust this back to normal because no company is going to be willing to be the first to start hiring Americans back to get demand started again. This can only happen after Americans have suffered enough hardship to legislate against such practices.
In the meantime, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer (statistics mislead here because the average income doesn't need to change at all for this to happen because it is median income that does the shifting, but most people don't understand mean and median the difference between these two) and Americas infrastructure has taken a huge hit as federal and state tax revenues fall in line with wages, since US tax revenue is predominantly wage based. The huge trade deficits America has continued with outsourced nations will have tanked the dollar and energy costs will skyrocket. It will now be nearly impossible to bring industry back to the US and since military might follows economic might, US power will be marginalized across the globe. Somewhere along this journey, the dollar will be replaced by the Euro as the currency of choice for oil and the impotent American military will be powerless to stop it. America will suffer a major economic heart attack as dollar reserves are dumped by banks across the world to facilitate trading in Euros. It will then be left dealing with an Ultra-Great Depression without any means of financing its way out because of the huge national debt. This may very well lead to the collapse of the federal government resembling the Soviet downfall.
Apparently, you cannot grasp the concept that the definition of "fixed" varies.
The question that outsourcing begs is, "What happens to the world economy when you deflate America's capacity to consume by reducing the purchasing power of its formerly well compensated labor force?" Done on a small scale, it's a benefit to whatever business that profits from the ability to manufacture with low labor costs and sell at high prices, but done on a large scale labor costs remain about the same if rising slightly but the ability to sell at the same high price is no longer possible because the former consumer base has been eroded. It's the Henry Ford principle of paying high wages to sell expensive items such has cars, turned on its head. Americans will no longer be able to afford the same products that they could when they were fully employed before.
A harsh loss for America but an unpleasant loss for the world as well.
Why would you glorify producing little with lots of work? You certainly didn't hand write your slashdot submissions with ink on a piece of vellum, but are apparently very angry at progress. If less people produce the same GDP, then those employed work more and others go unemployed. Welcome higher crime rates, social unrest and wasted GDP that comes with both. Those employed are also less involved in the democratic process, raising their kids or retraining and learning because they're at work more.
You're either rich or ignorant.
In GDP per hour worked, the US ranks third behind Germany and France and this is not even a fair comparison for the average citizen of each nation given that the Gini index is so high for the US. You have apparently never experienced what a 35hour work week with 6 weeks of vacation can do for your standard of living. Or the fact that a lot of personal earnings in the US are consumed by the cost of health care which is a standard benefit for citizens of other nations.
I don't know of a good measure for consumer choice but having travelled to both Germany and Japan myself, it is my personal experience that consumer choice is equal to that of the US. Some areas fare better while others do not.
Comparing productivity levels among the G7 nations blows your inefficiency argument out of the water.
Living in a fantasy of American exceptionalism is becoming harder every year. It never ceases to amuse me how much effort people will expend on stroking their nationalism.
If you believe that the election dollar beggars that make up the nation's politicians are the ruling class, then you are apparently quite susceptible to the media.
In America particularly, the government really is for the people and by the people by definition, but this still leaves most of us to question who exactly these people that the government is "for and by" are.
So why was this "real value" generally in line with that of other advanced industrialized nations for nearly 40 years and then suddenly unhinged in the 90's to climb to the staggering heights today?
Every economist they interview should be asked the following question, "Extending current trends in outsourcing what will the American economy look like and what will the world economy look like as a result in the next several decades?"
Really? Then how do you explain the ratio of CEO pay to average employee pay being an order of magnitude higher in the US than in other advanced industrialized countries?