I know everyone thinks that outsourcing because the labor is cheaper. That is not the case.
Here are some reasons jobs are outsourcing overseas:
1. The people are better educated. OK, so maybe U.S. comp-sci people from a top-notch University like MIT might be the best in the world, but that is the minority of people in the tech buisness. The average Indian who goes in for an IT tech support job is better educated in the basics of math, science, and a lot of times english, than the average American who goes in for the job.
2. There is less American style stupidity. In India, you don't have to worry about being sued for $2,000,000, because an employee was offended when she heard two other employees discussing a Sienfeld episode in the lunchroom. In India, you don't have to worry about being sued for $5,000,000 because the bathroom stalls are half a centimeter too narrow, and therefore it is an "act of discrimination" against disabled people. You don't have to worry about some cry-baby law suit if the air conditioner doesn't work that good and so the office is 77 degrees instead of 72 degrees, or that the company isn't doing enough to accomidate their schitzophrenic employees or employees with terrets syndrom, or whatever. (I realize a lot of that kind of stupidity is now common in Western Europe too... but no-one is worried about American jobs being outsourced to Western Europe)
3. Regulatory costs. There is just a lot of stupid legislation and regulations than American buisnesses have to adhere to. I know, you think that regulation and legislation are good things because it "protects us"... but believe me, the vast majority of legislation is not to protect anyone. If legislation, lets say to protect the enviornment as an example, was really designed to protect the enviornment, it would be a clear, simple, short, and easily followed set of rules that anyone could understand - not the hundreds of thousands of pages of byzantine convoluted rules that only a lawyer who specializes in enviornmental law can understand. The vast majority of regulation is some sort of protectionism scheme, some licencing scheme to protect a certain profession or buisness interest, etc. And adhering to the hundreds of thousands of pages of laws you are required to follow has real costs... especially when you consider those costs occure everywhere along the supply chain leading up to your buisness.
4. There is a better work ethic. America used to have a great work ethic, but as time goes on Americans get lazier and lazier. When you pull into a shopping mall parking lot, and you see people about to fight over a parking spot in front of the building when there are empty spots about 10 meters away... well, if people can't walk 10 meters from their damn SUV to the shopping entrance, that kind of lazyness has got to effect their work as well!
5. The metric system. Come on America, step into the 20th century already and adopt the metric system. Not using the metric system does effect our economy. And for a reason why the U.S. hasn't adopted the metric system, see issue #4.
6. Taxes are high. Even if tax rates are considered low (although corporate tax rates in the U.S. are actually higher than in places like Sweden), you must look at the GDP consumed by government to know what the real tax rate is... because GDP consumed by the government is the actual way to measure how much the government is taking away from us. And in the U.S., our GDP consumed by the government is one of the highest in the world (well over 50%). American has an extremly high tax rate, that is cleverly concealed by inflation and deficit spending.
Sorry folks, the U.S. is no longer the free-market (at least relatively) and open society (at least relatively) that once made it an economic superpower. The United States still has a huge domestic market and lots of accumulated capital, so the U.S. economy is not going to collapse soon... But it is not cheap labor that is driving jobs out of the United States. It is the United States driving jobs out of the United States.
What are you talking about? most online gambling is overseas, and it is super easy to gamble online... Where you trying to be sarcastic? Or where you stating a fact (that online gambling exists, free and unrestricted, outside the U.S.)?
Sorry man, look at how many TVs are made in the United States... Look at what happened to the U.S. auto industry... look at what happened to U.S. textile manufacturing... If you don't think it is possible for an industry to just get up and leave the U.S., you are kidding yourself! In fact, online buisness is EVEN EASIER to move oversease than manufacturing.
Believe me, stupid legislation like this hurts U.S. buisness (and people who are or would be employed by such buisnesses). American lawmakers are absolutly arrogant when it comes to their belief that buisnesses won't just move outside the United States in response to crippling legislation.
Or, how about this: Personal networking sites moves outside the U.S.... And then the sites don't have to give a fuck about verifying anybody!
The side effect of this law is that: 1. Verification will be pointless when the myspace-like-sites move overseas! 2. America will cease to be a place to run a web based company.
Of course, the long term effect of these laws is that it will be easier to exploit kids, and we will be sabatoging our own economy. But at least politicians will be seen as "doing something".
I don't mean to offend anyone with blasphemous statements against your religion (Government Worship)... But laws don't solve problems.
To give an example everyone has heard of, take prohibition in the 1920s. The U.S. government banned alcoholic beverages... but since there still existed a huge demand for alcoholic beverages, and since there was an huge financial incentive to provide those beverages, it created an entire underground economy. Not only did alcohol consumption grow, but the ill effects were a lot worse (alchohol actually became cheaper because it was unregulated and untaxed, and a lot of alchohol was contaminated and caused really bad health effects). The result of banning alcohol was the creation of modern organized criminal gangs, an increase in alchohol consumption, and lots of dangerous poison being sold as booze.
Another example of government policies that do exactly the opposite of what they intend, rent control. The idea of rent control is that by limiting the amount of money that property owners can charge, it will help reduce the cost of housing in a city. However, often the cost of taxes, maintanence, etc., is greater than the maximum rent an owner is allowed to charge under the rend controls. This means that the owner can either not pay some expenses and since they have to pay their taxes or debt or go to jail or lose the property, they usually save money by cutting down on maintainence - rental properties begin falling apart as owners save costs they aren't making on rent by not maintaining buildings. Also, because there is no real profit in running rental buildings, no-one invests in new rental properties, people who already own rental property convert them to condos (which they can sell at a fair price), or just refuse to maintain the building and when it is no longer fit for use just shut it down. Rent control programs are usually followed by long term increases in rent, and often devistate huge portions of poor neighborhoods.
Also, you are forgetting that government is part of the problem of managing privacy. Governments issue indentification information (such as social insurance numbers, or whatever it is called in your country), that must be protected, yet don't have any protection in them. They created this government sanctioned IDs and numbers, without creating the proper infrastructure to protect those numbers. Not only that, but government catalogs the most amount of information on you! Now, I know that government worhsipers don't think it is bad that the government catalogs all your education, health, financial information and such... but government security of those things cannot be that strict. Which means that even if your own government did not share the information, it is easy enough for foreign governments and their spy and security services to get that information (if you think that the NSA, the CIA, or other spy agencies in the world, don't secretly aquire the information your government collects on you, you are a fool!)... And once foreign governments get that data they share it with friendly corporations. Right now, every scrap of data that your government collects on you (which is a lot of data) is shared with politically connected corporations, all around the world!
So, anyway, expecting the governments in the UK and the EU to protect your privacy, is pure fantasy. Not only is it very questionable that the laws would work as intended (doubtful, considering the huge economic incentive that companies have to compromise your privacy... where ever there is huge money to be made on something, people will do it)... but the governments of the UK and EU actually built the infrastructure (government issued ID numbers, centralized collection of your financial, health, education, etc., data) for large corporations to collect all your data.
At best, the Data Protection Act is theater designed for Euro politicians to say "look, we are doing something to protect your privacy".
But that does make a lot more people happy, isn't it? You cannot just bump into somebody and fear that they may be some one who hate you or vice versa, which is very unlike US where there is a prevalent distrust throughout the country, a general attitude of 'i don't care about them, they don't care about me'; while in Europe the society plays has 'some' role!
Nope... Relations between different ethnic groups are a lot better in the United States. Every day it seems like someone is bombing a synagoge in Europe... In the U.K. they are banning visiting students and facilty from Israel. There are no racist football chants in the U.S... 40% believe Mulsims should not vote according to the latest opinion polls in Sweden... the former president of France can say "Europe is Christian and should never be Muslim" and it doesn't even make headlines (could you imagine the outrage of Dubya saing that?)... After Theo Van Gogh was murdered there was more attacks against muslims in "tollerant" Holland than in the U.S. immediatly after 9/11. I know from personal experience that the company I worked for could not get work-visas for sending non-white workers (musicians doing a music tour) to France (getting them for white people were no problem). And lets not even get into the Romani, who for the most part live the same in Europe as blacks lived in the mid 19th century deep south just after slavery.
You will see a lot more attention on racism in the U.S. than Europe... and it makes sense... Societies that are more racist will tend not to address racism publicly, where as societies that are less racist will tend to make a huge deal out of it. Look at racism being addressed in media 60 years ago, and look at it today - If you had to judge by media attention, racism in society increased. But racism in society decreased, and hence attention and conciousness given to racism increased - There is less racism, and it is percieved as a bigger problem.
And if you look at the huge amount of European ethnic minorites immigrating to the United States, and then look at the almost insignificant number of Americans moving to Europe (and virtually all of them being upper class white people). If Europe was the land of racial harmony and equal opportunity, people in the United States wouldn't be able to emmigrate fast enough.
Even if you look at crime statistics, violent crime is lower in the United States. Murder is higher in the United States, but murder is pretty rare in either place. But fightings, stabbings, assault, muggings, football riots, and non-lethal violence (the kind you will most likely actually be caught up in sometime in your life... you are very very unlikely to be murdered) is far lower in the United States than in Europe. Americans don't fight each other as much as Europeans (although when they do, it tends to be more deadly).
Absolutly not. Europe says that the government needs the power to censor speech and punish political crimes, because that power is nessicary in order to stop "hate". Europe doesn't have laws against hate, Europe has laws against free speech and justifies those laws against free speech by saying that they are nessicary to stop hate.
If the intention is to stop acts of violence and discrimination, then the solution is quite simple: Outlaw acts of violence and discrimination.
Most governments desperatly want to censor the speech of their citizens. Unfortunatly, traditionally the left has been against censorship. So how do you neutralize free-speech advocates on the left? You convince them that free-speech is in conflict with some other value that they have.
In reality, European "hate speech" laws make hate far more dangerous, by driving it underground, by taking away the right of people to study hate an analyse it's causes, by giving hate groups a martyr complex and a sense of persecution, and by eliminating the best source of anti-hate information - the hate group propoganda itself (there is nothing that is more effective in discrediting hate groups than to allow them to freely state their opinions).
The people who support "Hate Speech" have an agenda of destroying free speech and promoting a government control totalitarian system of communication. They are willing to promote hate by trying to censor it, in order to allow the government absolute control over free expression. They are both hateful, and totalitarian... Europe's love affair with censorship and authoritarianism is far more dangerous than a few fringe hate groups (who, in world politics, are more similiar to the Hell's Angels or the Bloods and Crips, or the Mafia, or other criminal organization than any real political movement).
Then why don't you move to Cuba or North Korea, to enjoy the unrestricted free-flow of information that the dictatorship of the proletariet provides?
I mean, ideologically Marxist societies exist. Shouldn't Cuba and North Korea have the greatest free flow of information in the world?
And if you don't believe that Cuba and North Korea have the most free-flow of information, why not? Clearly they are the closest thing to Marx inspired socialism on the planet right now.
Copyright laws are nothing more than a tool of the ruling class to keep freedom and autonomy away from the people. The stifling blockade of draconian laws behind which which the free transmission of ideas is presently locked down is one of the more noxious devices by which the capitalist system perverts human society.
I realize that you are being ironic and everything... But just in case some people don't pick up the sarcasm and agree with you:
In every Marxist state, information is highly restricted. The last two remaining Marxist states, Cuba and North Korea, require licencing an approval to even browse the internet. And China, which is quasi-Marxist (they are capitalist, but still pretend to be Marxist and try to suppress "capitalist" ideas) is the most technologically advanced country when it comes to censoring the Internet.
Socialism, where the state has a monopoly on all communication, is about the worst system you can device for free flow of information. The only way to protect free and open communication is to make sure it is entirely decentralized, which is impossible to do in a centrally planned society.
And as for the advertising industry claiming that all such advertising was an urban myth, if I were them that's what I'd be saying by now in those places where it's criticized. In the board room where advertising is sold it might go differently. No offense, but we are discussing the advertising industry here, people who make their living saying what benefits them.
Except that I worked in an ad agency, and I know people who currently work in ad agencies. I know people who are in the boardroom, and people who create the ads. My own wife writes TV commercials for large companies including beer companies and such. Unless they are maintaining CIA levels of security where they don't even speak of such things to their own families or fellow employees (and if you ever worked for an advertising agency, that is pretty laugh inspiring), there is no subliminal adversiting going on.
Unless you are going to tread into serious conspiracy theory territory, there is no subliminal advertising going on. I mean you could argue that I am a secret plant by the ad-agencies I guess. But, sorry brother... it is fun to joke about this stuff, but it just doesn't happen.
It depends what you mean... for example, G. W. Bush proposed a plan to allow people in the U.S. to invest some of their social security deductions... this was characterized as some sort of Right Wing Plot to Impoverish Our Seniors by the left in the U.S.... At the same time, Bush's plan was largely based on a plan in Sweden that had support from the Social Democrats (which should supposedly be left of U.S. Democrats).
So you have the left wing in the United States, accusing the right wing of the United States of being ultra right wing in an economic plan that was invented by the Swedish left wing.
Which all means that left-wing right-wing classifications are pretty much useless any more... and that either the U.S. isn't as right, or Sweden isn't as left, as some people tend to believe.
a thing has the value of the cheapest way of replacing it.
Not quite... If I purchase a frozen pizza, and then keep the box (lets say the box is useful for storing LP records, and giving them a nice pepperonni odor!). The cheapest way to replace the box would be to purchase a new box of frozen pizza, since the company doesn't sell the box without buying a pizza. However, it would be silly to say the box without the pizza is the same value as the box with pizza. Clearly a pizza and a box are more valuable.
Second, you are assuming that the item in the game is an item. What people are paying for is a service. That service includes hosting virtual items, but no player of the game owns an item.
Labor does not equal value. 100 people could spend 100 years churning horseshit, and in the end you would still have horseshit - it would not be worth anything more. The labor theory of value is something that even many Marxists have a hard time believing.
Also, this money wasn't stolen in real life, it was stolen in the game. Stealing money is part of the game. If you spend 400 obtaining a game item, part of the value of the item is that it can be stolen... otherwise the game creaters would have not allowed items to be stolen in the game.
1. The game rules clearly state it is against the rules to convert in game money to real money... and they explicitly state the in-game money has no value.
2. The player never exchanged their in-game money for U.S. dollars.
The IRS and the U.S. government are already rabidly aggressive in enforcing taxes as it is... we don't need them going after fictional revenue.
Do you have any references to information about these hidden images? I have worked for an ad agency, and I know lots of people who work for ad agencies, and never ever has anyone ever actually done an ad with any sort of subliminal images or hidden images or anything like that. Pretty much there is universal agreement that it doesn't work, and it has never been done.
That isn't to say someone hasn't done it... if you could post a link to some documentation, I will keep an open mind... but I am pretty sure all this subliminal advertising stuff is urban mythology. At least it is considered an urban myth to most people in the ad buisness nowadays.
Virtually all societies ban slavery at the same time that they shift to an industrial economy. After you develop specialized labor, mass production, and proper markets, slavery actually becomes counter-productive because it leads to gross misallocation of labor and leaves large groups of producers who are not consumers. Despite what you learn in history books, slavery is banned out of economic self-interest, as opposed to human rights. Slavery in Europe proper was banned earlier than the United States, because Europe went through it's industrial revolution earlier.
However, after Europe "banned" slavery, slave-like conditions exists all throughout the territories outside the European continent that Europe controlled. European states carried out overt Imperialism that was for all practicle purposes slavery, and it continued into the 1960s. At the tail end of overt European Imperialism in the early 1960s, there were people in European colonial possessions who were living under the same standards of living as many American slaves of the early 1860s.
Also, racist mass-murder was taking place in Europe well into the 1990s. Could you imagine people in late 20th century Ohio standing by while people in Kentucky were being mass-murdered, the same way France or Germany or the rest of Europe stood by and ignored the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslav Wars? Human rights indeed!
I agree that it is a bad idea not to sell phone contracts to senior citizens... but when you assume that a group of people (senior citizens) are less capable of judging contracts than ordinary people, then you can't help but to end up with patronizing and discriminatory rules.
If you are making your contracts easier to understand for all customers, because customers of all ages are disatisfied with the contract, that makes sense. It is reasonable. But if you are making contracts "easier for seniors", then there is an implicit assumption of inferiority.
The proper thing for the company to do would be to treat seniors the exact same way as they treat everyone else. But if the company is supposed to "protect" seniors, if seniors are assuming to have lesser abilities such that they need protection, how can the company "protect" seniors WITHOUT discriminating in some way or form.
We are demanding standards of behavior from this company that are contradictory, and therefore impossible to achieve.
Civilized Europe is full of anti-discrimination laws. On very rare occasions, they might even enforce them (provided they are protecting a good white christian native born citizen from "age discrimination". Muslims, Gypsies, Jews, Immigrants, need not apply!)
Last time *I* checked, the deep south of the United States had more progressive views of minorities and immigrants than most capitals of "progressive" Europe. That is why European minorities are emmigrating to the U.S. or Canada. So save us the sanctimonious bullshit.
Cuba and North Korea already have this. You have to pass a rigorous government screening process to access the Internet. They make sure no stupid people use the internet (and, of course, if you question the government, or it's policies, or the ideology it is based on, then you are obviously stupid and don't qualify for using the Internet).
But, we are all so open-minded freedom-loving democratic people in the western world, that we would never use government licencing or regulation to supress dissenting political beliefs. No one would ever dream of doing such a thing!
If you sell contracts to old people that they don't understand - then people are going to complain you are taking advantage of old people. If you don't sell contracts to old people who may not understand - then people are going to complain you are discriminating against old people.
Sorry, you can't have it both ways. You can't give certain members of the public special protection, without taking away some of their rights. You must either treat old people as total equals to young people, or you must treat them like children. If you want to "protect" seniors as a group under the assumption that they are more easily taken advantage of, there is no way you can treat them as fully responsible adults. The two are mutually exclusive.
I think we have reached the point in society where no-matter what you do, how you act, or how honestly you are trying to do the right thing, people are going to be perpetually outraged and trying to destroy you.
Let me get this straight...when listing reasons why artists don't get paid much, the first one you list is that they have to pay advances to the artists?!?
Yes... Artists get paid in royalties on record sales... artists also get an advance on their royalties. The advance is then "paid back" from their royalties (Meaning, if you get a $200,000 advance, you don't recieve a royalty check until your royalties have amounted to greater than $200,000, and you get the difference). The advance is more like a loan on future royalties than a paycheck. That is why it is called an "advance".
Many artists never make enough money to cover that advance (basicly, they "default" on the loan... kind of...). However, they don't have to give that advance back. They already spent the money on drugs and sports cars, maybe. So where does the record company get the money to pay advances to artists that don't make the money back? They get the money from artists that do make lots of money.
So paying advances to lots of artists who will never make the money back is the reason that artist royalties are low. A huge cut of the revenue that popular artists generate is used to subsidize all the bands that were signed and totally flopped. When you hear that your favorite artist is making $0.75 royalties on a $20 CD, that is because the revenue that your favorite artist is generating is being used to pay for 20 artists who won't sell records.
Big record companies spend a lot of money signing artists, most of whom never end up making real money... they do this becauce they hope that at least a few of the artists will makes lots of money.
Now, the economics of classical music, indie labels, niche genres of music are a bit different... they are a bit less likely to give huge advances to artists that pop music record labels.
When the RIAA runs to congress to legislate against MySpace, is will have almost total popular support from Americans. Here is how the RIAA will do it:
1. They will say that because MySpace accepts any artist and music without a real screening process, it is promoting sexualy explicit and violent messages in music, and that we have to do something about it. (This will get the support of the religious right and fearful parents).
2. They will say that because MySpace accepts any artist and music without any real screening process, it is promoting hateful and degrading messages in music, and that we have to do something about it. (This will get the support of the politically correct left).
3. They will say that MySpace is exploiting it's artists, by not paying them a minimum wage or benifits for their music, and we have to do something about it. Since it is impossible to pay a living wage to every single artist making music in his spare time, this will mean that MySpace will have to stop supporting millions on artists. (This will get the support of labor unions, and the center-left).
Don't worry, when the RIAA attacks MySpace, they will do it in a way that you most certainly will support because it will fit into your predisposed knee jerk political beliefs. If you are against racism, they will have you believing that MySpace promotes racism. If you are against sexuality, they will have you believing that MySpace is promoting sexual promiscuity. If you are a socialist, they will paint MySpace as a big oppressive monopoly that is exploiting the artists. They will not go to congress and say "They are taking away our profits", they will use whatever issue you are most concerned about, and do it through front groups.
When it comes time to destroy MySpace, you will not only vote for the politician who does it, you will not only support it 100%, you will think that anyone who tries to stop it is evil!
Slashdot Mirror
I know everyone thinks that outsourcing because the labor is cheaper. That is not the case.
Here are some reasons jobs are outsourcing overseas:
1. The people are better educated. OK, so maybe U.S. comp-sci people from a top-notch University like MIT might be the best in the world, but that is the minority of people in the tech buisness. The average Indian who goes in for an IT tech support job is better educated in the basics of math, science, and a lot of times english, than the average American who goes in for the job.
2. There is less American style stupidity. In India, you don't have to worry about being sued for $2,000,000, because an employee was offended when she heard two other employees discussing a Sienfeld episode in the lunchroom. In India, you don't have to worry about being sued for $5,000,000 because the bathroom stalls are half a centimeter too narrow, and therefore it is an "act of discrimination" against disabled people. You don't have to worry about some cry-baby law suit if the air conditioner doesn't work that good and so the office is 77 degrees instead of 72 degrees, or that the company isn't doing enough to accomidate their schitzophrenic employees or employees with terrets syndrom, or whatever. (I realize a lot of that kind of stupidity is now common in Western Europe too... but no-one is worried about American jobs being outsourced to Western Europe)
3. Regulatory costs. There is just a lot of stupid legislation and regulations than American buisnesses have to adhere to. I know, you think that regulation and legislation are good things because it "protects us"... but believe me, the vast majority of legislation is not to protect anyone. If legislation, lets say to protect the enviornment as an example, was really designed to protect the enviornment, it would be a clear, simple, short, and easily followed set of rules that anyone could understand - not the hundreds of thousands of pages of byzantine convoluted rules that only a lawyer who specializes in enviornmental law can understand. The vast majority of regulation is some sort of protectionism scheme, some licencing scheme to protect a certain profession or buisness interest, etc. And adhering to the hundreds of thousands of pages of laws you are required to follow has real costs... especially when you consider those costs occure everywhere along the supply chain leading up to your buisness.
4. There is a better work ethic. America used to have a great work ethic, but as time goes on Americans get lazier and lazier. When you pull into a shopping mall parking lot, and you see people about to fight over a parking spot in front of the building when there are empty spots about 10 meters away... well, if people can't walk 10 meters from their damn SUV to the shopping entrance, that kind of lazyness has got to effect their work as well!
5. The metric system. Come on America, step into the 20th century already and adopt the metric system. Not using the metric system does effect our economy. And for a reason why the U.S. hasn't adopted the metric system, see issue #4.
6. Taxes are high. Even if tax rates are considered low (although corporate tax rates in the U.S. are actually higher than in places like Sweden), you must look at the GDP consumed by government to know what the real tax rate is... because GDP consumed by the government is the actual way to measure how much the government is taking away from us. And in the U.S., our GDP consumed by the government is one of the highest in the world (well over 50%). American has an extremly high tax rate, that is cleverly concealed by inflation and deficit spending.
Sorry folks, the U.S. is no longer the free-market (at least relatively) and open society (at least relatively) that once made it an economic superpower. The United States still has a huge domestic market and lots of accumulated capital, so the U.S. economy is not going to collapse soon... But it is not cheap labor that is driving jobs out of the United States. It is the United States driving jobs out of the United States.
What are you talking about? most online gambling is overseas, and it is super easy to gamble online... Where you trying to be sarcastic? Or where you stating a fact (that online gambling exists, free and unrestricted, outside the U.S.)?
Sorry man, look at how many TVs are made in the United States... Look at what happened to the U.S. auto industry... look at what happened to U.S. textile manufacturing... If you don't think it is possible for an industry to just get up and leave the U.S., you are kidding yourself! In fact, online buisness is EVEN EASIER to move oversease than manufacturing.
Believe me, stupid legislation like this hurts U.S. buisness (and people who are or would be employed by such buisnesses). American lawmakers are absolutly arrogant when it comes to their belief that buisnesses won't just move outside the United States in response to crippling legislation.
Or, how about this: Personal networking sites moves outside the U.S. ... And then the sites don't have to give a fuck about verifying anybody!
The side effect of this law is that:
1. Verification will be pointless when the myspace-like-sites move overseas!
2. America will cease to be a place to run a web based company.
Of course, the long term effect of these laws is that it will be easier to exploit kids, and we will be sabatoging our own economy. But at least politicians will be seen as "doing something".
I will sleep safe now, knowing this monster is off the street.
I don't mean to offend anyone with blasphemous statements against your religion (Government Worship)... But laws don't solve problems.
To give an example everyone has heard of, take prohibition in the 1920s. The U.S. government banned alcoholic beverages... but since there still existed a huge demand for alcoholic beverages, and since there was an huge financial incentive to provide those beverages, it created an entire underground economy. Not only did alcohol consumption grow, but the ill effects were a lot worse (alchohol actually became cheaper because it was unregulated and untaxed, and a lot of alchohol was contaminated and caused really bad health effects). The result of banning alcohol was the creation of modern organized criminal gangs, an increase in alchohol consumption, and lots of dangerous poison being sold as booze.
Another example of government policies that do exactly the opposite of what they intend, rent control. The idea of rent control is that by limiting the amount of money that property owners can charge, it will help reduce the cost of housing in a city. However, often the cost of taxes, maintanence, etc., is greater than the maximum rent an owner is allowed to charge under the rend controls. This means that the owner can either not pay some expenses and since they have to pay their taxes or debt or go to jail or lose the property, they usually save money by cutting down on maintainence - rental properties begin falling apart as owners save costs they aren't making on rent by not maintaining buildings. Also, because there is no real profit in running rental buildings, no-one invests in new rental properties, people who already own rental property convert them to condos (which they can sell at a fair price), or just refuse to maintain the building and when it is no longer fit for use just shut it down. Rent control programs are usually followed by long term increases in rent, and often devistate huge portions of poor neighborhoods.
Also, you are forgetting that government is part of the problem of managing privacy. Governments issue indentification information (such as social insurance numbers, or whatever it is called in your country), that must be protected, yet don't have any protection in them. They created this government sanctioned IDs and numbers, without creating the proper infrastructure to protect those numbers. Not only that, but government catalogs the most amount of information on you! Now, I know that government worhsipers don't think it is bad that the government catalogs all your education, health, financial information and such... but government security of those things cannot be that strict. Which means that even if your own government did not share the information, it is easy enough for foreign governments and their spy and security services to get that information (if you think that the NSA, the CIA, or other spy agencies in the world, don't secretly aquire the information your government collects on you, you are a fool!)... And once foreign governments get that data they share it with friendly corporations. Right now, every scrap of data that your government collects on you (which is a lot of data) is shared with politically connected corporations, all around the world!
So, anyway, expecting the governments in the UK and the EU to protect your privacy, is pure fantasy. Not only is it very questionable that the laws would work as intended (doubtful, considering the huge economic incentive that companies have to compromise your privacy... where ever there is huge money to be made on something, people will do it)... but the governments of the UK and EU actually built the infrastructure (government issued ID numbers, centralized collection of your financial, health, education, etc., data) for large corporations to collect all your data.
At best, the Data Protection Act is theater designed for Euro politicians to say "look, we are doing something to protect your privacy".
No, they qualify for a SIN number, which is a far more appropriate acronym for the mark of the beast! :)
But that does make a lot more people happy, isn't it? You cannot just bump into somebody and fear that they may be some one who hate you or vice versa, which is very unlike US where there is a prevalent distrust throughout the country, a general attitude of 'i don't care about them, they don't care about me'; while in Europe the society plays has 'some' role!
Nope... Relations between different ethnic groups are a lot better in the United States. Every day it seems like someone is bombing a synagoge in Europe... In the U.K. they are banning visiting students and facilty from Israel. There are no racist football chants in the U.S... 40% believe Mulsims should not vote according to the latest opinion polls in Sweden... the former president of France can say "Europe is Christian and should never be Muslim" and it doesn't even make headlines (could you imagine the outrage of Dubya saing that?)... After Theo Van Gogh was murdered there was more attacks against muslims in "tollerant" Holland than in the U.S. immediatly after 9/11. I know from personal experience that the company I worked for could not get work-visas for sending non-white workers (musicians doing a music tour) to France (getting them for white people were no problem). And lets not even get into the Romani, who for the most part live the same in Europe as blacks lived in the mid 19th century deep south just after slavery.
You will see a lot more attention on racism in the U.S. than Europe... and it makes sense... Societies that are more racist will tend not to address racism publicly, where as societies that are less racist will tend to make a huge deal out of it. Look at racism being addressed in media 60 years ago, and look at it today - If you had to judge by media attention, racism in society increased. But racism in society decreased, and hence attention and conciousness given to racism increased - There is less racism, and it is percieved as a bigger problem.
And if you look at the huge amount of European ethnic minorites immigrating to the United States, and then look at the almost insignificant number of Americans moving to Europe (and virtually all of them being upper class white people). If Europe was the land of racial harmony and equal opportunity, people in the United States wouldn't be able to emmigrate fast enough.
Even if you look at crime statistics, violent crime is lower in the United States. Murder is higher in the United States, but murder is pretty rare in either place. But fightings, stabbings, assault, muggings, football riots, and non-lethal violence (the kind you will most likely actually be caught up in sometime in your life... you are very very unlikely to be murdered) is far lower in the United States than in Europe. Americans don't fight each other as much as Europeans (although when they do, it tends to be more deadly).
Absolutly not. Europe says that the government needs the power to censor speech and punish political crimes, because that power is nessicary in order to stop "hate". Europe doesn't have laws against hate, Europe has laws against free speech and justifies those laws against free speech by saying that they are nessicary to stop hate.
If the intention is to stop acts of violence and discrimination, then the solution is quite simple: Outlaw acts of violence and discrimination.
Most governments desperatly want to censor the speech of their citizens. Unfortunatly, traditionally the left has been against censorship. So how do you neutralize free-speech advocates on the left? You convince them that free-speech is in conflict with some other value that they have.
In reality, European "hate speech" laws make hate far more dangerous, by driving it underground, by taking away the right of people to study hate an analyse it's causes, by giving hate groups a martyr complex and a sense of persecution, and by eliminating the best source of anti-hate information - the hate group propoganda itself (there is nothing that is more effective in discrediting hate groups than to allow them to freely state their opinions).
The people who support "Hate Speech" have an agenda of destroying free speech and promoting a government control totalitarian system of communication. They are willing to promote hate by trying to censor it, in order to allow the government absolute control over free expression. They are both hateful, and totalitarian... Europe's love affair with censorship and authoritarianism is far more dangerous than a few fringe hate groups (who, in world politics, are more similiar to the Hell's Angels or the Bloods and Crips, or the Mafia, or other criminal organization than any real political movement).
Well, if Cuba is not Marxist, and North Korea is not Marxist... do you care to tell me what country, in all of history, was Marxist?
Then why don't you move to Cuba or North Korea, to enjoy the unrestricted free-flow of information that the dictatorship of the proletariet provides?
I mean, ideologically Marxist societies exist. Shouldn't Cuba and North Korea have the greatest free flow of information in the world?
And if you don't believe that Cuba and North Korea have the most free-flow of information, why not? Clearly they are the closest thing to Marx inspired socialism on the planet right now.
Copyright laws are nothing more than a tool of the ruling class to keep freedom and autonomy away from the people. The stifling blockade of draconian laws behind which which the free transmission of ideas is presently locked down is one of the more noxious devices by which the capitalist system perverts human society.
I realize that you are being ironic and everything... But just in case some people don't pick up the sarcasm and agree with you:
In every Marxist state, information is highly restricted. The last two remaining Marxist states, Cuba and North Korea, require licencing an approval to even browse the internet. And China, which is quasi-Marxist (they are capitalist, but still pretend to be Marxist and try to suppress "capitalist" ideas) is the most technologically advanced country when it comes to censoring the Internet.
Socialism, where the state has a monopoly on all communication, is about the worst system you can device for free flow of information. The only way to protect free and open communication is to make sure it is entirely decentralized, which is impossible to do in a centrally planned society.
"pretty much impossible to fall off" - unless you are President Bush.
:p
So what you are trying to say is that President Bush can do the impossible?
And as for the advertising industry claiming that all such advertising was an urban myth, if I were them that's what I'd be saying by now in those places where it's criticized. In the board room where advertising is sold it might go differently. No offense, but we are discussing the advertising industry here, people who make their living saying what benefits them.
Except that I worked in an ad agency, and I know people who currently work in ad agencies. I know people who are in the boardroom, and people who create the ads. My own wife writes TV commercials for large companies including beer companies and such. Unless they are maintaining CIA levels of security where they don't even speak of such things to their own families or fellow employees (and if you ever worked for an advertising agency, that is pretty laugh inspiring), there is no subliminal adversiting going on.
Unless you are going to tread into serious conspiracy theory territory, there is no subliminal advertising going on. I mean you could argue that I am a secret plant by the ad-agencies I guess. But, sorry brother... it is fun to joke about this stuff, but it just doesn't happen.
It depends what you mean... for example, G. W. Bush proposed a plan to allow people in the U.S. to invest some of their social security deductions... this was characterized as some sort of Right Wing Plot to Impoverish Our Seniors by the left in the U.S. ... At the same time, Bush's plan was largely based on a plan in Sweden that had support from the Social Democrats (which should supposedly be left of U.S. Democrats).
So you have the left wing in the United States, accusing the right wing of the United States of being ultra right wing in an economic plan that was invented by the Swedish left wing.
Which all means that left-wing right-wing classifications are pretty much useless any more... and that either the U.S. isn't as right, or Sweden isn't as left, as some people tend to believe.
a thing has the value of the cheapest way of replacing it.
Not quite... If I purchase a frozen pizza, and then keep the box (lets say the box is useful for storing LP records, and giving them a nice pepperonni odor!). The cheapest way to replace the box would be to purchase a new box of frozen pizza, since the company doesn't sell the box without buying a pizza. However, it would be silly to say the box without the pizza is the same value as the box with pizza. Clearly a pizza and a box are more valuable.
Second, you are assuming that the item in the game is an item. What people are paying for is a service. That service includes hosting virtual items, but no player of the game owns an item.
Labor does not equal value. 100 people could spend 100 years churning horseshit, and in the end you would still have horseshit - it would not be worth anything more. The labor theory of value is something that even many Marxists have a hard time believing.
Also, this money wasn't stolen in real life, it was stolen in the game. Stealing money is part of the game. If you spend 400 obtaining a game item, part of the value of the item is that it can be stolen... otherwise the game creaters would have not allowed items to be stolen in the game.
You are wrong about a couple of things:
1. The game rules clearly state it is against the rules to convert in game money to real money... and they explicitly state the in-game money has no value.
2. The player never exchanged their in-game money for U.S. dollars.
The IRS and the U.S. government are already rabidly aggressive in enforcing taxes as it is... we don't need them going after fictional revenue.
Do you have any references to information about these hidden images? I have worked for an ad agency, and I know lots of people who work for ad agencies, and never ever has anyone ever actually done an ad with any sort of subliminal images or hidden images or anything like that. Pretty much there is universal agreement that it doesn't work, and it has never been done.
That isn't to say someone hasn't done it... if you could post a link to some documentation, I will keep an open mind... but I am pretty sure all this subliminal advertising stuff is urban mythology. At least it is considered an urban myth to most people in the ad buisness nowadays.
Virtually all societies ban slavery at the same time that they shift to an industrial economy. After you develop specialized labor, mass production, and proper markets, slavery actually becomes counter-productive because it leads to gross misallocation of labor and leaves large groups of producers who are not consumers. Despite what you learn in history books, slavery is banned out of economic self-interest, as opposed to human rights. Slavery in Europe proper was banned earlier than the United States, because Europe went through it's industrial revolution earlier.
However, after Europe "banned" slavery, slave-like conditions exists all throughout the territories outside the European continent that Europe controlled. European states carried out overt Imperialism that was for all practicle purposes slavery, and it continued into the 1960s. At the tail end of overt European Imperialism in the early 1960s, there were people in European colonial possessions who were living under the same standards of living as many American slaves of the early 1860s.
Also, racist mass-murder was taking place in Europe well into the 1990s. Could you imagine people in late 20th century Ohio standing by while people in Kentucky were being mass-murdered, the same way France or Germany or the rest of Europe stood by and ignored the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslav Wars? Human rights indeed!
I agree that it is a bad idea not to sell phone contracts to senior citizens... but when you assume that a group of people (senior citizens) are less capable of judging contracts than ordinary people, then you can't help but to end up with patronizing and discriminatory rules.
If you are making your contracts easier to understand for all customers, because customers of all ages are disatisfied with the contract, that makes sense. It is reasonable. But if you are making contracts "easier for seniors", then there is an implicit assumption of inferiority.
The proper thing for the company to do would be to treat seniors the exact same way as they treat everyone else. But if the company is supposed to "protect" seniors, if seniors are assuming to have lesser abilities such that they need protection, how can the company "protect" seniors WITHOUT discriminating in some way or form.
We are demanding standards of behavior from this company that are contradictory, and therefore impossible to achieve.
Civilized Europe is full of anti-discrimination laws. On very rare occasions, they might even enforce them (provided they are protecting a good white christian native born citizen from "age discrimination". Muslims, Gypsies, Jews, Immigrants, need not apply!)
Last time *I* checked, the deep south of the United States had more progressive views of minorities and immigrants than most capitals of "progressive" Europe. That is why European minorities are emmigrating to the U.S. or Canada. So save us the sanctimonious bullshit.
Cuba and North Korea already have this. You have to pass a rigorous government screening process to access the Internet. They make sure no stupid people use the internet (and, of course, if you question the government, or it's policies, or the ideology it is based on, then you are obviously stupid and don't qualify for using the Internet).
But, we are all so open-minded freedom-loving democratic people in the western world, that we would never use government licencing or regulation to supress dissenting political beliefs. No one would ever dream of doing such a thing!
If you sell contracts to old people that they don't understand - then people are going to complain you are taking advantage of old people.
If you don't sell contracts to old people who may not understand - then people are going to complain you are discriminating against old people.
Sorry, you can't have it both ways. You can't give certain members of the public special protection, without taking away some of their rights. You must either treat old people as total equals to young people, or you must treat them like children. If you want to "protect" seniors as a group under the assumption that they are more easily taken advantage of, there is no way you can treat them as fully responsible adults. The two are mutually exclusive.
I think we have reached the point in society where no-matter what you do, how you act, or how honestly you are trying to do the right thing, people are going to be perpetually outraged and trying to destroy you.
Let me get this straight...when listing reasons why artists don't get paid much, the first one you list is that they have to pay advances to the artists?!?
Yes... Artists get paid in royalties on record sales... artists also get an advance on their royalties. The advance is then "paid back" from their royalties (Meaning, if you get a $200,000 advance, you don't recieve a royalty check until your royalties have amounted to greater than $200,000, and you get the difference). The advance is more like a loan on future royalties than a paycheck. That is why it is called an "advance".
Many artists never make enough money to cover that advance (basicly, they "default" on the loan... kind of...). However, they don't have to give that advance back. They already spent the money on drugs and sports cars, maybe. So where does the record company get the money to pay advances to artists that don't make the money back? They get the money from artists that do make lots of money.
So paying advances to lots of artists who will never make the money back is the reason that artist royalties are low. A huge cut of the revenue that popular artists generate is used to subsidize all the bands that were signed and totally flopped. When you hear that your favorite artist is making $0.75 royalties on a $20 CD, that is because the revenue that your favorite artist is generating is being used to pay for 20 artists who won't sell records.
Big record companies spend a lot of money signing artists, most of whom never end up making real money... they do this becauce they hope that at least a few of the artists will makes lots of money.
Now, the economics of classical music, indie labels, niche genres of music are a bit different... they are a bit less likely to give huge advances to artists that pop music record labels.
When the RIAA runs to congress to legislate against MySpace, is will have almost total popular support from Americans. Here is how the RIAA will do it:
1. They will say that because MySpace accepts any artist and music without a real screening process, it is promoting sexualy explicit and violent messages in music, and that we have to do something about it. (This will get the support of the religious right and fearful parents).
2. They will say that because MySpace accepts any artist and music without any real screening process, it is promoting hateful and degrading messages in music, and that we have to do something about it. (This will get the support of the politically correct left).
3. They will say that MySpace is exploiting it's artists, by not paying them a minimum wage or benifits for their music, and we have to do something about it. Since it is impossible to pay a living wage to every single artist making music in his spare time, this will mean that MySpace will have to stop supporting millions on artists. (This will get the support of labor unions, and the center-left).
Don't worry, when the RIAA attacks MySpace, they will do it in a way that you most certainly will support because it will fit into your predisposed knee jerk political beliefs. If you are against racism, they will have you believing that MySpace promotes racism. If you are against sexuality, they will have you believing that MySpace is promoting sexual promiscuity. If you are a socialist, they will paint MySpace as a big oppressive monopoly that is exploiting the artists. They will not go to congress and say "They are taking away our profits", they will use whatever issue you are most concerned about, and do it through front groups.
When it comes time to destroy MySpace, you will not only vote for the politician who does it, you will not only support it 100%, you will think that anyone who tries to stop it is evil!