Oh, get off it. The US supplies more dictatorships with weapons than China ever has.
We sold weapons to Iran before and after the Shah. We just concluded a massive weapons deal with Saudi Arabia. To be honest, I don't think Saudi Arabia or 90's era Liberia are any more democratic than North Korea. Don't claim the moral high-ground unless you can justify giving 20 billion USD in advanced weaponry to a tyrannical theocracy known for sponsoring terrorism.
And as for China's willingness to invade democracies when it suits their self interest, see what the US did in 1956 to Iran(Check out Operation Ajax on Wikipeida), and what the US did to Guatemala during the Cold war; Or what the CIA did in Chile, or the Congo, I could go on.
Of course, every country with power and influence has black marks. See France's activities in West Africa and Rwanda, their current activities in Niger, to say nothing of their history in Indochina and Algeria; Or see the UK's actions in Uganda, Former Rhodesia, Iran, and Suez. Don't even get me started on Russia or Israel.
The truth is, governments are rather soulless entities, which by design act in their own self-interest. To ascribe personal qualities to them like evil is idiotic and counter-productive. Instead, we have to understand the pressures a nation's leaders face.
China is an ethnic powder keg teeming with religious and ethnic strife, Jingoism, and hyper-Nationalism. They have massive inequalities of wealth, and a population schooled in Marxism. In the meantime, rapid economic, political, and demographic trends have made most government and societal institutions irrelevant.
Faced with this, what do you think the Chinese leaders want the most? Stability. Every single action they take, from supporting dictatorships in Burma and North Korea, to propping up the US economy with bond purchases, to refusing to float their currency. China has no urge to pick a fight with America, not now and not ever. They have their own problems to worry about, and the last thing they want to do is add another.
I don't really see why you are so concerned. If a major bank fails, FDIC liabilities would almost surely be under 300 billion. And we finance 300 billion in bonds every year anyway, without much effect on inflation.
"This is all in the hands of the bankers. Let's face most people are not very bright. If someone will give them a credit to buy a house they can't really afford, they'll take it. They don't understand what an adjustable rate it, they don't understand percentages, exponential growth, and how banking system works. If someone is giving away loans like candy, there will be someone else willing to take the candy."
But not you, you are financially responsible, unlike the unwashed masses.
You gold-bugs severely overestimate the impact of printing money. If a major bank collapsed, the FDIC would only need to insure around a 30 billion, since the majority of funds are kept above $100,000.
The inflationary effects of such an injection, while they exist, would most likely be far under one percent.
"What does matter is that we're seeing American financial institutions start to fail, due to the poor health of the American economy."
Really? Inflation is low, Unemployment is low, GDP growth is ok. I don't really see how you can define "poor health".
"plus illegal immigration, and the rise of the manufacturing sector in the third-world has put the American economy on shaky ground."
How has the presence of massively cheaper goods and labor made us worse off?
"The Fed has likely resorted to hyperinflation to try to exert control over this failing economy."
Hyperinflation? No, Zimbabwe has hyper-inflation. The US has lower inflation rates then most of developed world.
"The American dollar has decreased in value so quickly that it's at par with the Canadian dollar."
I hate it when people try and moralize an exchange rate. The decrease in the dollar's value will hurt some people, and be beneficial to others.
"Now we have the oil-producing nations considering switching to the Euro for their transactions, rather than the dollar."
I hear this nightmare scenario all the time, and I don't see the problem with it. The US will lose a couple billion dollars in seniorage revenue, and it will be somewhat harder to finance debt. I actually see this as a positive move.
"It's not really the poor economy, it's the fact Bush has used a bubble instead of actual growth."
What exactly did the Bush administration do wrong, as far as economic management goes? No matter who was in power, after 9/11 any politician would have drastically increased homeland security and military spending. The Bush Tax cuts were very popular, and would have been implemented anyway, whether or not Bush was in power. Not only that, but while corruption is very photogenic, it's effects have been economically negligible. Our deficit is mostly the result of highly enlarged entitlement spending, which I just can't see tied to George Bush.
You seem to think that presidents are relevant to macroeconomic trends. This is a common political delusion, but in the absence of massively stupid legislation(On the level of what has been seen in Latin America), the Federal Reserve bank is the only office with any real power.
"This housing boom, OTOH, everyone did have to play. Even renters pay more when houses prices are up, although at least they won't have to watch the value of their house plummet. And it's left us with no tangible benefits at all except millions of shoddy McMansions."
Of course, all that we are left with are millions of homes. What use could they serve?
"We could have put that same amount of effort and money in alternate energy, and be in the middle of a nice stock correction now, where alternate energy company stocks are dropping through the floor and being picked up by a few big players which are merging with the big energy suppliers who are just now realizing they need to change their business plan. Which wouldn't hurt John Q. Public at all. John Q. Public, in fact, came out ahead because he got 'sponsored' for solar panels and that company, with a crappy business plan, went out of business, like during the tech crash."
"No, it does not. Or, rather, it should not have. This is an age-old argument, really. The government's role should be limited to foreign policy (diplomacy and military) and upholding the law."
I wouldn't go that far, pollution control and paying for education is still important. Externalities do exist, even if they are rare.
"Getting broadband out the the rural America is as important to the economic develop of the US as getting power out to them in 30s was."
Yes, your right. Neither of them was very important. The areas that already had power before the new deal still provide the vast majority of economic output today.
"There are certain services that may not be profitable to provide, but are nevertheless overwhelmingly in the public interest to provide."
Yes, there are(education for example). But I believe these services are very rare, and electricity is not one of them.
"Sure, and people on the poor side of town should just move into the rich neighborhoods, since private industry certainly isn't going to waste money wiring areas where the demand and ability to pay isn't high enough."
If people on the poor side of town think of a good way to utilize this infrastructure, then they can raise some capital and buy some property where there is infrastructure.
If land values are high enough so that capital costs would be prohibitive, they could raise capital to pay a power company to give them service. If the costs are too high, well, then the idea was not productive enough, and society would be poorer overall if it was carried out.
And don't change the argument, within cities, DSL is available in even the poorest areas. The poor in the US are still relatively affluent, and it is still very profitable for infrastructure companies to cover them.
Research is somewhat different. Research done by one company benefits other companies, so left to the market, research will be under provided. Some of this can be mitigated by patent law, but research builds on other research, so even that is an imperfect solution. Keeping that in mind, government research can be entirely justified.
"But as such services became more and more necessary to our way of life, those areas that didn't get it would become less and less viable as places for further development. For a government with an interest in seeing a flourishing of the country and economy, it made sense to get everyone wired in, so we subsidized heavily the process of deploying these networks."
I don't see why two cities with population X are more productive then one city with population 2*X. In fact, economies of scale imply the opposite. So the argument that the government needs to create urban areas of development in the middle of Kansas does not really hold water. The population of the area should just move to areas where there already is development, instead of wasting large amounts of money rebuilding unnecessary infrastructure.
"And viewed in terms of what we put in vs. the eventual tax revenue on a more robust economy, it more than paid for itself."
No, it most likely did not. Not only did it discourage inefficient farmers from moving to more productive(read, higher paying) jobs, but it also deprived cities of labor, and prevented economies of scale.
"It's much like the interstate highway system. The amount of economic activity that it enables and encourages benefits everyone and almost certainly more than pays for itself, but it's really hard to quantify."
Actually, many people argue that the interstate highway system was a massive corporate welfare gift to GM, that severely distorted our economy toward oil dependence and urban sprawl.
If their food production revenue does not make up for the lack of services, farmers move to the city to do more productive things and enjoy a higher standard of living. As these farmers move, food prices go up, and this encourages food production.
I prefer to pay my farmers in money, not welfare bullshit.
It's perfectly rational for first adopters to be angry. Signaling is a large motivation behind buying an Iphone, purchasers want to show others that they have $500 to wantonly spend on a phone. When the price drops to $300, they are now indistinguishable from those who purchased at the lower price, and so the value that they recieve from the phone is much lower.
I remember a class action lawsuit that sued Mercedes for making a little bought shitty model, on the basis that it cheapened the signaling value of Mercedes cars everywhere.
Not that society should care about the rational anger of first adopters.
"In your world 50 TV channels should all be able carry the same sporting event at the same time."
Yes, they would. But I still believe in copyright. Broadcasters would have to charge a flat-rate to any channel that would like to broadcast the event. This is how it works for sitcoms, I don't see why live events should be any different.
"A worker you hired could work for someone else on a competing project."
So? If a company has an idea, they should patent it. That makes any form of corporate espionage irrelevant.
"There would be no patents, no copyrights, no innovation. I don't think you've thought this through."
Seems like a false dichotomy.
"While you might envision more competition on the consumer side, there would be less competition on the producer side."
I don't see why. I predict this would cause a rather large increase in productivity and GDP, increasing competition everywhere.
"How is this informative? Hell, it's not even correct. The US is not a police state, no matter how many times you say it. JHC, if the US is a Police State, then what is Great Britain? Hell! What is Cuba, Nicaragua, or China? Don't give me that 'police state' bullshit until you can truly get locked up for stating "the US is a police state." Unless you are risking you neck by saying it, you are lying. (It's ironic that liars like this are the ones saying "Bush Lied")"
Nicaragua? I don't really see how they can be considered autocratic, they have been doing rather well since Republicans stopped illegally funding their civil war.
"Why did Apple need any carrier permission to run the visual voicemail system? Every US carrier allows for free call fowarding, they could have fowarded all unanswered calls to a central Apple server, which then plays a pre-recorded message, and then records audio messages. These audio messages are then downloaded to the phone.
To the end user, this would be indistinguishable from the current visual voicemail system. Maintaining the server would cost money, but not much. As a worst case scenario, they could have bundled it with a.Mac subscription."
The only reason why Apple did it is because AT&T paid Apple a large chunk of money in order to keep exclusivity, overtaking any potential revenue from T-mobile customers. Exclusive contracts of any type should be illegal, as it is trivial to show that they are economically suboptimal.
"AT&T had to make substantial investments to prepare for the iPhone"
Like what?
"So I would think that both Verizon and AT&T were extremely interested in an exclusive deal (obviously whoever didn't get the deal would claim that they were not interested at all to save face), but much much less interested in a non-exclusive deal. And on the other hand, Apple could get a much better contract in an exclusive deal than in a non-exclusive deal. And a non-exclusive deal might have never happened."
I don't see why Apple needed to make a deal at all. They could have just released their phone unlocked, allowing any user with a SIM card to connect.
"Plus, let's not forget how stingy networks are with internetwork traffic. Really, how much do you think people would have to pay for visual voicemail from a Verizon (ick) iPhone to a Cingular (ack) iPhone? Keeping all the iPhones on a single network is wise in that Apple has control over the agreement their customers sign, which is very important to the Apple mythology."
Why did Apple need any carrier permission to run the visual voicemail system? Every US carrier allows for free call fowarding, they could have fowarded all unanswered calls to a central Apple server, which then plays a pre-recorded message, and then records audio messages. These audio messages are then downloaded to the phone.
To the end user, this would be indistinguishable from the current visual voicemail system. Maintaining the server would cost money, but not much. As a worst case scenario, they could have bundled it with a.Mac subscription.
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We sold weapons to Iran before and after the Shah. We just concluded a massive weapons deal with Saudi Arabia. To be honest, I don't think Saudi Arabia or 90's era Liberia are any more democratic than North Korea. Don't claim the moral high-ground unless you can justify giving 20 billion USD in advanced weaponry to a tyrannical theocracy known for sponsoring terrorism.
And as for China's willingness to invade democracies when it suits their self interest, see what the US did in 1956 to Iran(Check out Operation Ajax on Wikipeida), and what the US did to Guatemala during the Cold war; Or what the CIA did in Chile, or the Congo, I could go on.
Of course, every country with power and influence has black marks. See France's activities in West Africa and Rwanda, their current activities in Niger, to say nothing of their history in Indochina and Algeria; Or see the UK's actions in Uganda, Former Rhodesia, Iran, and Suez. Don't even get me started on Russia or Israel.
The truth is, governments are rather soulless entities, which by design act in their own self-interest. To ascribe personal qualities to them like evil is idiotic and counter-productive. Instead, we have to understand the pressures a nation's leaders face.
China is an ethnic powder keg teeming with religious and ethnic strife, Jingoism, and hyper-Nationalism. They have massive inequalities of wealth, and a population schooled in Marxism. In the meantime, rapid economic, political, and demographic trends have made most government and societal institutions irrelevant.
Faced with this, what do you think the Chinese leaders want the most? Stability. Every single action they take, from supporting dictatorships in Burma and North Korea, to propping up the US economy with bond purchases, to refusing to float their currency. China has no urge to pick a fight with America, not now and not ever. They have their own problems to worry about, and the last thing they want to do is add another.
So? Why exactly are domestic students better uses of taxpayer dollars then foreign students?
I don't really see why you are so concerned. If a major bank fails, FDIC liabilities would almost surely be under 300 billion. And we finance 300 billion in bonds every year anyway, without much effect on inflation.
But not you, you are financially responsible, unlike the unwashed masses.
Elitist.
The inflationary effects of such an injection, while they exist, would most likely be far under one percent.
Really? Inflation is low, Unemployment is low, GDP growth is ok. I don't really see how you can define "poor health".
"plus illegal immigration, and the rise of the manufacturing sector in the third-world has put the American economy on shaky ground."
How has the presence of massively cheaper goods and labor made us worse off?
"The Fed has likely resorted to hyperinflation to try to exert control over this failing economy."
Hyperinflation? No, Zimbabwe has hyper-inflation. The US has lower inflation rates then most of developed world.
"The American dollar has decreased in value so quickly that it's at par with the Canadian dollar."
I hate it when people try and moralize an exchange rate. The decrease in the dollar's value will hurt some people, and be beneficial to others.
"Now we have the oil-producing nations considering switching to the Euro for their transactions, rather than the dollar."
I hear this nightmare scenario all the time, and I don't see the problem with it. The US will lose a couple billion dollars in seniorage revenue, and it will be somewhat harder to finance debt. I actually see this as a positive move.
What exactly did the Bush administration do wrong, as far as economic management goes? No matter who was in power, after 9/11 any politician would have drastically increased homeland security and military spending. The Bush Tax cuts were very popular, and would have been implemented anyway, whether or not Bush was in power. Not only that, but while corruption is very photogenic, it's effects have been economically negligible. Our deficit is mostly the result of highly enlarged entitlement spending, which I just can't see tied to George Bush.
You seem to think that presidents are relevant to macroeconomic trends. This is a common political delusion, but in the absence of massively stupid legislation(On the level of what has been seen in Latin America), the Federal Reserve bank is the only office with any real power.
"This housing boom, OTOH, everyone did have to play. Even renters pay more when houses prices are up, although at least they won't have to watch the value of their house plummet. And it's left us with no tangible benefits at all except millions of shoddy McMansions."
Of course, all that we are left with are millions of homes. What use could they serve?
"We could have put that same amount of effort and money in alternate energy, and be in the middle of a nice stock correction now, where alternate energy company stocks are dropping through the floor and being picked up by a few big players which are merging with the big energy suppliers who are just now realizing they need to change their business plan. Which wouldn't hurt John Q. Public at all. John Q. Public, in fact, came out ahead because he got 'sponsored' for solar panels and that company, with a crappy business plan, went out of business, like during the tech crash."
Really? How exactly could we have done that?
My general point is that I am opposed to rural subsidies of any kind.
I wouldn't go that far, pollution control and paying for education is still important. Externalities do exist, even if they are rare.
Yes, your right. Neither of them was very important. The areas that already had power before the new deal still provide the vast majority of economic output today.
Yes, there are(education for example). But I believe these services are very rare, and electricity is not one of them.
"Sure, and people on the poor side of town should just move into the rich neighborhoods, since private industry certainly isn't going to waste money wiring areas where the demand and ability to pay isn't high enough."
If people on the poor side of town think of a good way to utilize this infrastructure, then they can raise some capital and buy some property where there is infrastructure.
If land values are high enough so that capital costs would be prohibitive, they could raise capital to pay a power company to give them service. If the costs are too high, well, then the idea was not productive enough, and society would be poorer overall if it was carried out.
And don't change the argument, within cities, DSL is available in even the poorest areas. The poor in the US are still relatively affluent, and it is still very profitable for infrastructure companies to cover them.
Research is somewhat different. Research done by one company benefits other companies, so left to the market, research will be under provided. Some of this can be mitigated by patent law, but research builds on other research, so even that is an imperfect solution. Keeping that in mind, government research can be entirely justified.
I don't see why two cities with population X are more productive then one city with population 2*X. In fact, economies of scale imply the opposite. So the argument that the government needs to create urban areas of development in the middle of Kansas does not really hold water. The population of the area should just move to areas where there already is development, instead of wasting large amounts of money rebuilding unnecessary infrastructure.
"And viewed in terms of what we put in vs. the eventual tax revenue on a more robust economy, it more than paid for itself."
No, it most likely did not. Not only did it discourage inefficient farmers from moving to more productive(read, higher paying) jobs, but it also deprived cities of labor, and prevented economies of scale.
"It's much like the interstate highway system. The amount of economic activity that it enables and encourages benefits everyone and almost certainly more than pays for itself, but it's really hard to quantify."
Actually, many people argue that the interstate highway system was a massive corporate welfare gift to GM, that severely distorted our economy toward oil dependence and urban sprawl.
I prefer to pay my farmers in money, not welfare bullshit.
So? Why should people in rural areas have their power subsidized by people who live in cities?
I harbor the opposite suspicion: The march of technology is almost solely reliant on greed.
Why is that? Electricity distribution works very well without government.
But even so, price discrimination can't be too bad, as arbitrage soon destroys any signigant spreads.
As for the legal status, I am pretty sure that it is legal.
I remember a class action lawsuit that sued Mercedes for making a little bought shitty model, on the basis that it cheapened the signaling value of Mercedes cars everywhere.
Not that society should care about the rational anger of first adopters.
Yes, they would. But I still believe in copyright. Broadcasters would have to charge a flat-rate to any channel that would like to broadcast the event. This is how it works for sitcoms, I don't see why live events should be any different.
"A worker you hired could work for someone else on a competing project."
So? If a company has an idea, they should patent it. That makes any form of corporate espionage irrelevant.
"There would be no patents, no copyrights, no innovation. I don't think you've thought this through."
Seems like a false dichotomy.
"While you might envision more competition on the consumer side, there would be less competition on the producer side."
I don't see why. I predict this would cause a rather large increase in productivity and GDP, increasing competition everywhere.
Nicaragua? I don't really see how they can be considered autocratic, they have been doing rather well since Republicans stopped illegally funding their civil war.
Considering that there are considerable costs to both mistakes, I can't answer that without more data.
"Why did Apple need any carrier permission to run the visual voicemail system? Every US carrier allows for free call fowarding, they could have fowarded all unanswered calls to a central Apple server, which then plays a pre-recorded message, and then records audio messages. These audio messages are then downloaded to the phone. To the end user, this would be indistinguishable from the current visual voicemail system. Maintaining the server would cost money, but not much. As a worst case scenario, they could have bundled it with a .Mac subscription."
The only reason why Apple did it is because AT&T paid Apple a large chunk of money in order to keep exclusivity, overtaking any potential revenue from T-mobile customers. Exclusive contracts of any type should be illegal, as it is trivial to show that they are economically suboptimal.
Like what?
"So I would think that both Verizon and AT&T were extremely interested in an exclusive deal (obviously whoever didn't get the deal would claim that they were not interested at all to save face), but much much less interested in a non-exclusive deal. And on the other hand, Apple could get a much better contract in an exclusive deal than in a non-exclusive deal. And a non-exclusive deal might have never happened."
I don't see why Apple needed to make a deal at all. They could have just released their phone unlocked, allowing any user with a SIM card to connect.
Why did Apple need any carrier permission to run the visual voicemail system? Every US carrier allows for free call fowarding, they could have fowarded all unanswered calls to a central Apple server, which then plays a pre-recorded message, and then records audio messages. These audio messages are then downloaded to the phone.
To the end user, this would be indistinguishable from the current visual voicemail system. Maintaining the server would cost money, but not much. As a worst case scenario, they could have bundled it with a .Mac subscription.