"If the visibility is good and nobody else is on the road, stop at and then ignore the red light."
The visibility being good means the cameras also have no problem to grab your license plate (nor a better thing to do, since your are the only car in the roundabout) so no, better not to ignore the traffic lights.
"The post you are replying to just explained why that is incorrect."
No, in fact it's irrelevant. As it is the parent article: "devices not depending on old-style cues can handle without old-style cues". Thank you a lot, Captain Obvious.
"Too bad you can't handle freedom of manufacturers to choose what they want to display."
When thinking about a "free market" basically the first thing that comes to mind is "informed decision". As long as a side of the equation (the prospective customer) feels that knowing if a food is GMO or not is part of their informed decision process, is the duty of government (one of the only ones even for die hard liberals) to make sure producers comply.
Only, of course, it is. And it is willing to stand for it with the power of its guns.
"basically all governments gave up on actual money and are printing funny pieces of paper"
Only, of course, those funny pieces of paper are, in fact, actual money.
"Money is store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account."
I know English has that problem Roman languages don't have in that the verb 'to be' stands for both existence and quality but, sorry, you are wrong: money is not a store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account but those are *money's properties* in that something that has those properties *and* is called money *is* money.
"Sure, you can exchange with government money, you can account with it but you cannot store value in it"
Funny then, that this very morning I went to the supermarket and depleted part of the value storaged in my pocket in exchange for some supplies. Good the shop attendant didn't know I can't store value in bank notes because otherwise he probably wouldn't find funny to exchange supplies for nothing.
" - I know that people are thieves, which is why I am perfectly willing to pay for private security, which is the way security should be handled."
I know a lot of things. That you didn't answer my question, for instance.
"I am wondering whether it should be illegal to require an 'about to be laid off employee' to train their replacements."
Why not? If you are holding a given position is perfectly within requirements to be able to demonstrate your knowledge about it. See, no one is asking for or expecting professional-grade training, but just fulfilling your job. You still get your paycheck by the end of the week so since the company is still fulfilling its part of the agreement, why shouldn't you fulfill yours?
If you don't like your current employment at its current situation, you just need to do what you'd do in any other similar situation: find a new one.
"Yeah, Trump has done some of those things as a businessman, but he didn't necessarily like it, it was just forced upon him if he wanted to win the bid."
So, you mean that once in government, he will sell himself to the big corporations, not that he necessarily like it, but because it's just forced upon him if he wanted to win his golden retirement.
"Its like the founding fathers. Some were even slave owners, but every last one of them hated the institution of slavery, and wanted to abolish it."
Yes, because, obviously, without laws forbidding the institution of slavery they were *forced* to own slaves. I can see it: "Noooo, noooo, pleeeeease, don't force onto me the obligation to own those hundreds of slaves to labour these thousands acres I'm *forced* to own! Nooooo, pretty pleeeease!"
"make America for Americans again"
Oh! so Trump is going to abolish the Reservations legal fallacy and return the lands to their American legit owners? Didn't know.
"Most of the other politicians will lie to us"
Trump won't do that, since it's obvious from the very beginning he will do whatever it takes to get the outcome better fits himself. Not that he will like it, you know, but still...
"The biggest problem with IT workers is that they feel that their work and effort is not being recognized, and their pay and benefits are not being proportional to the effort and intelligence put in. Unions will not fix that problem, but hinder it, as the top employee will be treated the same as the lazy and/or inadequate employee"
Is it not that you said that IT workers *as a class* have these and these claims? How is it not that bargaining also as a whole can't result into a better output?
"Unions make sense for blue-collar jobs, because such jobs easily replaceable"
Isn't it the very core of this article that IT jobs are also easily replaceable... even by people living thousands of miles away, so even easier than their blue-collar fellows?
"You are able to make a living because of a society you didn't built up, going to work over roads you...
- this drivel is based on the assumptions that those things require any form of government theft and gun point robber to exist, they do not."
And your answer is based on your opinions about how things shouldn't be the way they are, but still, they are. Money very well "shouldn't" be a government monopoly but it still *is* a government monopoly and, then again, on a democratic society government is nothing but the construct of a set of free individuals acting out of sheer self interest, just like you'd expect from your anarcho-libertarian Arcadia. I see you now for what you are, and I know it's simply wasted time talking to somebody that just reject thinking in a coherent manner: anarcho-libertarianism, despite it's obvious attractive, only can work on minds lacking internal coherence; a conundrum of "patches" with some internal coherence but contradicting one another.
But then, just a last question: Within your world without government and just agreements among free individuals acting together, what's the problem on a group of free individuals acting out of sheer self interest to build... an standing army to steal your productive output at the point of their guns? Or is it that, despite your egalitarian claims, you erect yourself as the unquestionable guru that says what other groupings of free individuals acting together can or can't do?
"I'm offended because Microsoft thinks I'm the stereotypical heterosexual..."
Just change my argument and put "if you feel offended because Microsoft thinks this or that about yourself" instead of "if you feel harassed by human nudity" and it stays solid: is your damn problem, not anyone harassing you.
Get with it.
Even more when talking about a business trying to attract prospective customers since that's a typical situation of the sin becoming its own punishment: you don't find the way Microsoft behaves to be proper? Fine. Don't need to feel offended when you can better not buy their products and leave the market sort its own.
"You're playing meaningless semantic games. You're obviously an idiot."
Yes, sure.
And ooloorie is somebody that thinks that something that is obviously a disputed field (seeking "abortion does not kill a fetus" at Google returns 12.900.000 results) is not disputed.
"None of those amount to job losses, so your argument that there simply aren't enough jobs to go around is wrong. There are enough jobs going around, but people just don't take as much money home as they should. "
That *is* the coastal receding before the tsunami.
"it's due to cronyism and rent seeking."
You have had enough of that all along since the industrial revolution (and before), so it's no explanation for anything new.
"automation generally leads to higher salaries"
True. For those that still have a job.
But as long as head count and overall productivity become unrelated there *will* be a point where there will be less job positions than people wanting a job unless unseen-for new fields open (that's what happened along the industrial era and it becomes increasingly uncertain now, because of the very nature of the new kind of technological advances), or world population reaches a plateau and starts falling, or new legislation comes in to limit people's work load, or limits the need to have a job altogether. For a while, offer and demand will buffer it, because of the excessive labour offer with lower wages and worse work conditions, but unless there's a change, it won't last long.
When I read this article, I had a strong sense of deja vu: a sister of mine worked for some two years as a mid manager at a factory in China. The same corp owns another similar factory in Europe only fully automated while the one in China offered jobs to about 500 people. You can imagine why one is fully automated while the other is still labour-intensive. And you also can imagine what will eventually happen (and it will happen sooner than later). That's not an isolated example: it's happening all around the world in basically all industries.
"What other countries do is beyond our control."
Up to a point, even what your country does is beyond your control, so that's no argument not to think about it or worry about it; on the other hand, even if it is out of our control, if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.
"at this point, several other countries have been much more aggressive on cutting back on the welfare state, regulations, and government spending, and it has worked out well for them."
Maybe it has worked out well for the countries, doubtful about the individuals in those countries. Germany easily comes to mind. And even then, it very well might be a just a short term band-aid at the expense of the citizenship well being.
"So you are saying that people argue that abortion does not kill a fetus? Really???"
Really. That's what "disputed" means.
In fact, I find the strange part being you thinking there can be no dispute, given that there isn't even legal consensus on what a fetus is: "A fetus is typically defined as a developing human at a certain point after conception to birth. The precise definition varies by applicable laws". At the very least, an abortion before a developing human is legally considered a fetus (prior to this, it is considered an embryo) can't do anything to the fetus -much less killing it.
And that's before even considering what "to kill" is in this given context.
"They can die in the streets; they are objectively worthless."
Of course yes. But even then, they are going to cost you money: you don't want their corpses rotting in the streets, do you? It becomes quite unhealthy after a while, you know.
And once you start considering those worthless meatbags in terms of the money they are going to cost you anyway, why don't you start thinking how you can maximize your investment while, at the same time, minimizing your risk and exposition to that scum? Hungry meatbags with forks and torches are no good prospective for your lucrative business' continuity, after all.
"Why must I give up my property at gunpoint to someone claiming to act for those who refuse to work?"
If I take your sentence at face value, no, you don't forcibly have to give up your property at gunpoint, you just need to if you want to stay alive after the encounter.
But I suppose you are not talking about any real gang of armed robbers but that you are allegorically talking about taxes and the government power to collect them.
On one hand, what in hell makes you think that even a minimally significant part of your taxes are collected "for those who refuse to work"? Not facts, for sure.
On the other hand, about the wider issue about taxes, no, you are not giving up your property *at all*. Government only collect taxes in the form of money. Now, take a bill from your wallet and look carefully at it: you see? it is *not* your property; it is just a government issued certificate for all debts, public or private so whatever portion the government reclaims of it, it's still nothing of yours but something you shouldn't have in your control to start with. You can barter your cows for grain instead, if so you like.
And, of course, in the wider issue of social contract, what are you really claiming to be "yours"? You are able to make a living because of a society you didn't built up, going to work over roads you didn't built up, with a level of security you didn't built up, trading things over both national and international channels you didn't built up, tradings that are secured because of a legal system you didn't built up, using a legal tender whose confidence you didn't built up... need I to follow? And still you whine about "giving up your property at gunpoint"? What property at all would you own without all that coverage you didn't built up and that you wouldn't possibly build up even if you lived one thousand lives exclusively devoted to that task?
It is of course legit to ask for always greater levels of scrutiny and efficiency about our taxes, but taxes themselves? I won't tell here what I think of that kind of people... Anyway, there must be some place, somewhere, where you can be left alone. Just don't bother calling 911 to the rescue if you ever happen to break a leg, you never payed for it, you know.
"They know, or should know, these two things: 1. Capital in capable hands enables the production that improves the life of others."
People is starting to openly question the ability of the hands that hold the (most of) capital.
"2. Once the principle of private ownership of capital is lost, everybody's ownership of property is vulnerable."
Not yet so far than regarding point one and not still anywhere near to the point of no return but people too is feeling that their ownership is not secured anyway against the privileges of a short bunch that are seemingly not only above law but even capable of rewriting the laws to their advantage.
In the end it is old Hobbes' and Rosseau's Social Contract: to the advantage of those in power, it's usually invisible and accepted by fiat by the masses (not even "accepted by fiat" but being more like a jail of invisible bars), but currently there's more and more people questioning it at all levels -not a significant portion of the population yet, but quite a vocal one in proportion. It doesn't even need to be expressed in explicit terms to induce a change: last time social contract was (implicitly) challenged in first world we ended up with a World War so, even if chances are low, it is something requesting careful analysis.
"People "abide by it" because at some level they realize that they benefit from it."
You are absolutely right... while it works.
A bit over the board, but Marie Antoinette was also absolutely right about thinking peasants would understand that despite the inequalities of the ancien regime, they were safer under it than under the upcoming anarchy of a revolution... till she wasn't.
"Competition doesn't help here, because all of the competitors will face exactly the same unavoidable government-imposed increased costs and will increase their prices by the same amount"
Competition is a complex thing. Yes, there is what we usually think of competition (in this case a fast food chain against other fast food chains), but then, there is "competition", i.e. fast food chains against vendor machines and even "competition", i.e. fast food chains against movie theaters (read about, say, Porter's five forces, mainly competition, rivalry and substitution).
In this regard, since different competition will have different cost sheets they'll suffer different taxations (i.e.: if you somehow tax on labour costs, those more labour-intensive business will suffer more; if you increase the minimum wages, those with the more minimally waged employees per invested dollar).
But I wasn't focusing on that but just on the fact that shaking an otherwise mature market (i.e. by changing its tax envelope) may end up with a different, maybe more adjusted one (at a lower profit margin without it being translated to customers). Prime example is low-cost airlines: traditional airlines were accomodated to a given service level and a given profit margin till, due to changing circumstances some players decide to change both the service perception *and* the accepted profit margin. In this case you got both new players (i.e. Virgin or Ryanair) and old ones adapting to the new times (and also old players unable to adapt and thus folding down). And you will be with me that a lot of things can be said about low-cost airlines but uneedingly pushing increased costs to their customers is not one of them.
"Unless they can figure some way around those costs, like moving production or headquarters off-shore."
Exactly what I said: you can find the ways to vary the cost of any entry item, or you can work on shuffling around the relative weight of your cost entries. In this article, the Fast Food CEO is trying both at a time since he's trying to reduce their labour costs under the menace of substituting them with CAPEX. In any way, provided healthy competition, cost increases are *not* pushed down to the customer till the profit margin is the barely acceptable (while, at the same time, all companies will be pressing to increase their profit margins, sometimes by reducing costs, sometimes by increasing prices, as much as they can go away with).
"The average profit margin for the S&P 500 is below 8%. What do you think is going to happen if a 20% surtax is added onto sales?"
You put the numbers, not me, but then, now that you ask, that would mean (provided there's no other "financial engineering" in place) that the average profit margin for the S&P 500 would go from below 8% to around 6%. Given that as of today the 10 year USA bond is sold at a 2.43% discount, do you think capital would flee? where to?
"How long is a manufacturer going to stay in business losing 12% on every sale"
You don't know how to operate on percentages nor how taxation on profits work, do you?
Slashdot Mirror
"If the visibility is good and nobody else is on the road, stop at and then ignore the red light."
The visibility being good means the cameras also have no problem to grab your license plate (nor a better thing to do, since your are the only car in the roundabout) so no, better not to ignore the traffic lights.
"The post you are replying to just explained why that is incorrect."
No, in fact it's irrelevant. As it is the parent article: "devices not depending on old-style cues can handle without old-style cues". Thank you a lot, Captain Obvious.
"Too bad you can't handle freedom of manufacturers to choose what they want to display."
When thinking about a "free market" basically the first thing that comes to mind is "informed decision". As long as a side of the equation (the prospective customer) feels that knowing if a food is GMO or not is part of their informed decision process, is the duty of government (one of the only ones even for die hard liberals) to make sure producers comply.
"Money is not a government monopoly of-course"
Only, of course, it is. And it is willing to stand for it with the power of its guns.
"basically all governments gave up on actual money and are printing funny pieces of paper"
Only, of course, those funny pieces of paper are, in fact, actual money.
"Money is store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account."
I know English has that problem Roman languages don't have in that the verb 'to be' stands for both existence and quality but, sorry, you are wrong: money is not a store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account but those are *money's properties* in that something that has those properties *and* is called money *is* money.
"Sure, you can exchange with government money, you can account with it but you cannot store value in it"
Funny then, that this very morning I went to the supermarket and depleted part of the value storaged in my pocket in exchange for some supplies. Good the shop attendant didn't know I can't store value in bank notes because otherwise he probably wouldn't find funny to exchange supplies for nothing.
" - I know that people are thieves, which is why I am perfectly willing to pay for private security, which is the way security should be handled."
I know a lot of things. That you didn't answer my question, for instance.
"I am wondering whether it should be illegal to require an 'about to be laid off employee' to train their replacements."
Why not? If you are holding a given position is perfectly within requirements to be able to demonstrate your knowledge about it. See, no one is asking for or expecting professional-grade training, but just fulfilling your job. You still get your paycheck by the end of the week so since the company is still fulfilling its part of the agreement, why shouldn't you fulfill yours?
If you don't like your current employment at its current situation, you just need to do what you'd do in any other similar situation: find a new one.
"Yeah, Trump has done some of those things as a businessman, but he didn't necessarily like it, it was just forced upon him if he wanted to win the bid."
So, you mean that once in government, he will sell himself to the big corporations, not that he necessarily like it, but because it's just forced upon him if he wanted to win his golden retirement.
"Its like the founding fathers. Some were even slave owners, but every last one of them hated the institution of slavery, and wanted to abolish it."
Yes, because, obviously, without laws forbidding the institution of slavery they were *forced* to own slaves. I can see it: "Noooo, noooo, pleeeeease, don't force onto me the obligation to own those hundreds of slaves to labour these thousands acres I'm *forced* to own! Nooooo, pretty pleeeease!"
"make America for Americans again"
Oh! so Trump is going to abolish the Reservations legal fallacy and return the lands to their American legit owners? Didn't know.
"Most of the other politicians will lie to us"
Trump won't do that, since it's obvious from the very beginning he will do whatever it takes to get the outcome better fits himself. Not that he will like it, you know, but still...
"The biggest problem with IT workers is that they feel that their work and effort is not being recognized, and their pay and benefits are not being proportional to the effort and intelligence put in. Unions will not fix that problem, but hinder it, as the top employee will be treated the same as the lazy and/or inadequate employee"
Is it not that you said that IT workers *as a class* have these and these claims? How is it not that bargaining also as a whole can't result into a better output?
"Unions make sense for blue-collar jobs, because such jobs easily replaceable"
Isn't it the very core of this article that IT jobs are also easily replaceable... even by people living thousands of miles away, so even easier than their blue-collar fellows?
"I have been reading Slashdot too long."
In Soviet Russia Slashdot reads you for too long!
"You are able to make a living because of a society you didn't built up, going to work over roads you...
- this drivel is based on the assumptions that those things require any form of government theft and gun point robber to exist, they do not."
And your answer is based on your opinions about how things shouldn't be the way they are, but still, they are. Money very well "shouldn't" be a government monopoly but it still *is* a government monopoly and, then again, on a democratic society government is nothing but the construct of a set of free individuals acting out of sheer self interest, just like you'd expect from your anarcho-libertarian Arcadia. I see you now for what you are, and I know it's simply wasted time talking to somebody that just reject thinking in a coherent manner: anarcho-libertarianism, despite it's obvious attractive, only can work on minds lacking internal coherence; a conundrum of "patches" with some internal coherence but contradicting one another.
But then, just a last question: Within your world without government and just agreements among free individuals acting together, what's the problem on a group of free individuals acting out of sheer self interest to build... an standing army to steal your productive output at the point of their guns? Or is it that, despite your egalitarian claims, you erect yourself as the unquestionable guru that says what other groupings of free individuals acting together can or can't do?
"All capital represents someone's labor"
So, where's the labor that vanished away in 2008 crysis?
"You don't get it."
I do get it.
"I'm not harassed by nudity"
Good for you.
"I'm offended because Microsoft thinks I'm the stereotypical heterosexual..."
Just change my argument and put "if you feel offended because Microsoft thinks this or that about yourself" instead of "if you feel harassed by human nudity" and it stays solid: is your damn problem, not anyone harassing you.
Get with it.
Even more when talking about a business trying to attract prospective customers since that's a typical situation of the sin becoming its own punishment: you don't find the way Microsoft behaves to be proper? Fine. Don't need to feel offended when you can better not buy their products and leave the market sort its own.
"You're playing meaningless semantic games. You're obviously an idiot."
Yes, sure.
And ooloorie is somebody that thinks that something that is obviously a disputed field (seeking "abortion does not kill a fetus" at Google returns 12.900.000 results) is not disputed.
And he is not a True Scotsman either.
"None of those amount to job losses, so your argument that there simply aren't enough jobs to go around is wrong. There are enough jobs going around, but people just don't take as much money home as they should. "
That *is* the coastal receding before the tsunami.
"it's due to cronyism and rent seeking."
You have had enough of that all along since the industrial revolution (and before), so it's no explanation for anything new.
"automation generally leads to higher salaries"
True. For those that still have a job.
But as long as head count and overall productivity become unrelated there *will* be a point where there will be less job positions than people wanting a job unless unseen-for new fields open (that's what happened along the industrial era and it becomes increasingly uncertain now, because of the very nature of the new kind of technological advances), or world population reaches a plateau and starts falling, or new legislation comes in to limit people's work load, or limits the need to have a job altogether. For a while, offer and demand will buffer it, because of the excessive labour offer with lower wages and worse work conditions, but unless there's a change, it won't last long.
When I read this article, I had a strong sense of deja vu: a sister of mine worked for some two years as a mid manager at a factory in China. The same corp owns another similar factory in Europe only fully automated while the one in China offered jobs to about 500 people. You can imagine why one is fully automated while the other is still labour-intensive. And you also can imagine what will eventually happen (and it will happen sooner than later). That's not an isolated example: it's happening all around the world in basically all industries.
"What other countries do is beyond our control."
Up to a point, even what your country does is beyond your control, so that's no argument not to think about it or worry about it; on the other hand, even if it is out of our control, if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.
"at this point, several other countries have been much more aggressive on cutting back on the welfare state, regulations, and government spending, and it has worked out well for them."
Maybe it has worked out well for the countries, doubtful about the individuals in those countries. Germany easily comes to mind. And even then, it very well might be a just a short term band-aid at the expense of the citizenship well being.
"So you are saying that people argue that abortion does not kill a fetus? Really???"
Really. That's what "disputed" means.
In fact, I find the strange part being you thinking there can be no dispute, given that there isn't even legal consensus on what a fetus is: "A fetus is typically defined as a developing human at a certain point after conception to birth. The precise definition varies by applicable laws". At the very least, an abortion before a developing human is legally considered a fetus (prior to this, it is considered an embryo) can't do anything to the fetus -much less killing it.
And that's before even considering what "to kill" is in this given context.
"My point is that there shouldn't be eye fodder for ANYBODY at a corporate event because it is tantamount to sexual harassment."
Uhhh... no, it isn't.
That you feel harassed by the very natural human nudity (and there was no human nudity at all) is your damn problem, not anyone harassing you.
Get with it.
"They can die in the streets; they are objectively worthless."
Of course yes. But even then, they are going to cost you money: you don't want their corpses rotting in the streets, do you? It becomes quite unhealthy after a while, you know.
And once you start considering those worthless meatbags in terms of the money they are going to cost you anyway, why don't you start thinking how you can maximize your investment while, at the same time, minimizing your risk and exposition to that scum? Hungry meatbags with forks and torches are no good prospective for your lucrative business' continuity, after all.
"Why must I give up my property at gunpoint to someone claiming to act for those who refuse to work?"
If I take your sentence at face value, no, you don't forcibly have to give up your property at gunpoint, you just need to if you want to stay alive after the encounter.
But I suppose you are not talking about any real gang of armed robbers but that you are allegorically talking about taxes and the government power to collect them.
On one hand, what in hell makes you think that even a minimally significant part of your taxes are collected "for those who refuse to work"? Not facts, for sure.
On the other hand, about the wider issue about taxes, no, you are not giving up your property *at all*. Government only collect taxes in the form of money. Now, take a bill from your wallet and look carefully at it: you see? it is *not* your property; it is just a government issued certificate for all debts, public or private so whatever portion the government reclaims of it, it's still nothing of yours but something you shouldn't have in your control to start with. You can barter your cows for grain instead, if so you like.
And, of course, in the wider issue of social contract, what are you really claiming to be "yours"? You are able to make a living because of a society you didn't built up, going to work over roads you didn't built up, with a level of security you didn't built up, trading things over both national and international channels you didn't built up, tradings that are secured because of a legal system you didn't built up, using a legal tender whose confidence you didn't built up... need I to follow? And still you whine about "giving up your property at gunpoint"? What property at all would you own without all that coverage you didn't built up and that you wouldn't possibly build up even if you lived one thousand lives exclusively devoted to that task?
It is of course legit to ask for always greater levels of scrutiny and efficiency about our taxes, but taxes themselves? I won't tell here what I think of that kind of people... Anyway, there must be some place, somewhere, where you can be left alone. Just don't bother calling 911 to the rescue if you ever happen to break a leg, you never payed for it, you know.
More on this...
"They know, or should know, these two things:
1. Capital in capable hands enables the production that improves the life of others."
People is starting to openly question the ability of the hands that hold the (most of) capital.
"2. Once the principle of private ownership of capital is lost, everybody's ownership of property is vulnerable."
Not yet so far than regarding point one and not still anywhere near to the point of no return but people too is feeling that their ownership is not secured anyway against the privileges of a short bunch that are seemingly not only above law but even capable of rewriting the laws to their advantage.
In the end it is old Hobbes' and Rosseau's Social Contract: to the advantage of those in power, it's usually invisible and accepted by fiat by the masses (not even "accepted by fiat" but being more like a jail of invisible bars), but currently there's more and more people questioning it at all levels -not a significant portion of the population yet, but quite a vocal one in proportion. It doesn't even need to be expressed in explicit terms to induce a change: last time social contract was (implicitly) challenged in first world we ended up with a World War so, even if chances are low, it is something requesting careful analysis.
"People "abide by it" because at some level they realize that they benefit from it."
You are absolutely right... while it works.
A bit over the board, but Marie Antoinette was also absolutely right about thinking peasants would understand that despite the inequalities of the ancien regime, they were safer under it than under the upcoming anarchy of a revolution... till she wasn't.
"Competition doesn't help here, because all of the competitors will face exactly the same unavoidable government-imposed increased costs and will increase their prices by the same amount"
Competition is a complex thing. Yes, there is what we usually think of competition (in this case a fast food chain against other fast food chains), but then, there is "competition", i.e. fast food chains against vendor machines and even "competition", i.e. fast food chains against movie theaters (read about, say, Porter's five forces, mainly competition, rivalry and substitution).
In this regard, since different competition will have different cost sheets they'll suffer different taxations (i.e.: if you somehow tax on labour costs, those more labour-intensive business will suffer more; if you increase the minimum wages, those with the more minimally waged employees per invested dollar).
But I wasn't focusing on that but just on the fact that shaking an otherwise mature market (i.e. by changing its tax envelope) may end up with a different, maybe more adjusted one (at a lower profit margin without it being translated to customers). Prime example is low-cost airlines: traditional airlines were accomodated to a given service level and a given profit margin till, due to changing circumstances some players decide to change both the service perception *and* the accepted profit margin. In this case you got both new players (i.e. Virgin or Ryanair) and old ones adapting to the new times (and also old players unable to adapt and thus folding down). And you will be with me that a lot of things can be said about low-cost airlines but uneedingly pushing increased costs to their customers is not one of them.
"Unless they can figure some way around those costs, like moving production or headquarters off-shore."
Exactly what I said: you can find the ways to vary the cost of any entry item, or you can work on shuffling around the relative weight of your cost entries. In this article, the Fast Food CEO is trying both at a time since he's trying to reduce their labour costs under the menace of substituting them with CAPEX. In any way, provided healthy competition, cost increases are *not* pushed down to the customer till the profit margin is the barely acceptable (while, at the same time, all companies will be pressing to increase their profit margins, sometimes by reducing costs, sometimes by increasing prices, as much as they can go away with).
"If they choose crime, then fsck'em, jail them."
Yeah. I think some Jean Valjean wrote a book about it, or something like that.
"Why is handing over the source code a bad thing?"
It is not. That part of "secret trial" probably is.
On the other hand (AFAIK) that's not what it was requested to Apple.
" I think moderation is what's important."
-1. Offtopic.
There
"There is no competition when everybody's input cost is the same."
There is no competition *on costs* and *on equilibrium* and *on a perfectly optimized market* when everybody's input costs are the same.
The three highlights are of some interest here.
"The average profit margin for the S&P 500 is below 8%. What do you think is going to happen if a 20% surtax is added onto sales?"
You put the numbers, not me, but then, now that you ask, that would mean (provided there's no other "financial engineering" in place) that the average profit margin for the S&P 500 would go from below 8% to around 6%. Given that as of today the 10 year USA bond is sold at a 2.43% discount, do you think capital would flee? where to?
"How long is a manufacturer going to stay in business losing 12% on every sale"
You don't know how to operate on percentages nor how taxation on profits work, do you?