Interminable large scale conventional wars — OR — one nuclear war.
I honestly don't know which is worse. As it is we are at peace waiting for a nuclear war. I'm absolutely certain this is better than being in the middle of a conventional World War IV or V.
The thesis that nukes prevent conflicts between nuclear powers is 100% correct in my opinion. Our propensity to indulge our rage explains the invasion of Iraq; there was a deeply felt need to bloody someone more significant than Afghan warlords after 9/11 and, right or wrong, Iraq happened to be right at the top of the US shit list. Had Saddam been armed with nukes and ballistic missile technology that war would not have happened.
Give China a blue water navy (circa 2017 or so) and a reason and they'll snap up some non-nuclear armed nation's shit just as fast, despite what US hating malcontents tell themselves.
The last time France had >38C temperatures over 14,000 elderly died, many in understaffed hospital wards while government employees were on vacation.
third world indeed
There is no usable public transit system, and what there is smells of urine and feels highly dangerous
Stay away from public transit; that's for 'students' and the welfare state's underclass which are increasingly synonymous and equally dangerous to phone/pad/laptop/credit-card equipped business people. We drive cars in the US.
The power lines are not buried, they are just haphazardly strung up on big poles all over
New construction (<30 years old) doesn't look like that -- power lines are buried. Existing infrastructure doesn't get improved. Municipalities and their quasi-goverment power companies have better things to spend their lavish budgets on than burying power lines.
Yes, monkeys were deliberately exposed to Ebola in the name of medical research. Yes, they would have had to be euthanized if the experiment had failed. In fact, they'll likely be killed anyhow just to ensure containment of any form of the virus.
Sorry.
BTW mods; there is nothing wrong with the occasional question from our simian relatives. Just leave this sort of thing for those of us that understand Primate and spare the down-mods.
OpenSUSE: Linux for grownups that earn a living in Linux.
I tried. I really, really tried to cope with Gnome 3 on Ubuntu. When that failed, I reverted to Gnome 2 and found it neglected; things that should work, things that worked when Gnome 2 was Ubuntu's desktop, don't.
Back to OpenSUSE. You might need to beat akanodi and nepomuk into submission and the current release installer gets NVidia wrong, but those are simple problems for competent users to overcome. Once squared away you're left with a usable, feature complete desktop. Protip: replace the distro Flash with the Adobe's RPM.
I must agree 100% with the 'mythical user' jab. As distributed by Ubuntu Gnome 3 offers only pain and frustration for power users. Maybe Mint fixes it. I don't know. Burned enough weekend time getting to where I'm happy so I'm sticking with OpenSUSE.
I'm not an Ubuntu hater. I absolutely love Ubuntu Server (which amounts to regression tested Debian) and use it for several production systems. I'll give it a few years, hope for some sort of upheaval among Gnome developers and then try again.
Dear Mark Shuttleworth,
You're product is being hurt by Gnome. Designing exclusively for novices and causal users will not work. Things that succeed emerge from the power user. Make them happy first. Then hide the things they need and love behind a simplified interface. Macs do not lack features or capabilities, they just avoid bothering lusers with complexity. That's why OS-X simultaneously pleases both grandma and Joe Programmer. Please Mark, you're smart enough to understand this. Stop suffering these Gnome guys and their tragically bad design. Linux really needs you to figure this out at some point.
your populace votes for their jobs and temporary income over the environment, what do you do?
Have pressure groups file suit and direct the case to a friendly judge who issues an indefinite injunction. No stink on you. Then, call your broker and put your money in foreign manufacturing where your wealth grows unimpeded by such problems. Then, have the 'community' where your mcmansion is being built zoned for a nice high brick wall all the way around so working class riff raff the use to do stuff like mine copper don't bother you or yours. Finally, attend lots of "non-profit" dinner parties and bask in the environmental kudos of your fellow wealthy politicos.
Ah no. Coal needs to continue evacuating to Asia where it can be burned safely outside the environment to make low cost solar panels and composite windmills we can then deploy throughout our happy shiny la-la land. You know, where coal is outlawed.
The parent is dead on correct. Vermont pulls most of it's power from a nuclear reactor that is slated to be shut down. They use almost no natural gas; it doesn't even register as a fuel source for electric power generation in Vermont according to the feds.
Vermont will replace the nuke with Canadian hydro power. They neatly re-classified huge hydro power operations ( > 200MW ) as 'renewable' so they can sign a big contracts with Hydro Quebec.
They're just trading salmon habitat in Canada for the consequences of gas mining, real or imagined, at home. How noble. Maybe they should ban whale oil derived power next.
That is a well written expression of contemporary conventional wisdom. Group-think, in other words.
The US government has an outfit called the ATF. They are responsible for, among other things, the regulation of imported firearms. They enforce detailed and burdensome standards on foreign manufacturers that export guns to the US. The US also collects an excise tax (for which few exemptions exist) of between 10-11% on imported firearms.
This is highly unusual. Almost no imports suffer such burdens. 70% of all imports to the US are tariff free, and most of the remaining 30% are fossil fuels, which means most manufactured goods are tariff free.
The result of all this is telling. In the US there are multiple, large, profitable firearms manufacturers that have built large advanced manufacturing facilities and are employing thousands of well paid, unionized workers.
The conventional wisdom you offer would have us believe that these US manufactured products would be wholly unaffordable due to the cost of US labor and regulations. The truth is that Sturm Ruger, for instance, has had to stop accepting new orders because, despite their vast and entirely domestic manufacturing operations, they can't keep up with demand. The guns are entirely affordable as evidenced by very high sales.
The truth is our leaders and captains of industry don't believe your conventional wisdom either. Having publicly acquired a black eye due to the failure of certain high profile investments, the US government felt the need to protect another domestic industry with a brand new tariff.
We know exactly what to do to protect domestic industry and we know it works. We just don't bother. The truth is we would rather that nasty industry business be kept far away, preferably somewhere that has next to no regulation and an amble supply of disposable, exploitable labor to maintain those "low, low" walmart prices.
There are no rates. There is only pull. If you have the pull you can invoke whatever exception is necessary and reserve whatever hotel room you want, because exceptions are baked into all of those rate schedules and spending rules. You only need enough pull to get away with invoking them.
Neely ran his little fiefdom just like a gangster. Mess with him and he ruined your career. There are thousands just like him at every level of government.
Booze and hookers for the Secret Service. Planet wide GSA jet set. $800k/year city managers. One boondoggle 'green energy' political payoff after another.
I'm looking forward to the US credit crisis. It's been a long time coming and nothing short of an extinction level caldera eruption can stop it now.
Apple gets singled out due to its extraordinary profile and profitability. That is inevitable and entirely legitimate. The fact that Foxconn also happens to be central to the supply chain of practically everything with a power cord only highlights the vast scope of the issue. Our electronics are the product of exploitation, abuse and the systematic avoidance of regulatory scrutiny, and it is high time for that to end.
Interesting reading the responses to this. There is a lot of doubt about the validity of these claims. I quickly counted at least six responses that attribute the results to over-diagnosis or changing definitions, with affirming replies and no down-mods, with the exception of one profane post.
Are these all 'conservatives' rejecting 'science'?
The tards in power aren't connecting the dots, even now.
When the tards in power have their agenda messed up by foreign competition they know exactly what to do. None of this is lost on them.
They have always understood the situation. The left supports it due to your second point; exporting industry to Asia while simultaneously erecting a vast statist regulatory regime for ourselves is optimal. Meanwhile, the right enjoys huge profit margins earned by manufacturing sans regulation in third world hell holes with disposable labor.
And that, my friends, is how tariffs and subsidies can apply to the same market.
There is no 'puzzle' or bizarre conflict. You can pretend there is if you wish, but that involves neglecting important bits of reality.
Applying tariffs is rare for the US. Over 70% of US imports are tariff free, and most of the remainder are fossil fuels. That means close to 100% of manufactured goods are tariff free.
So why have tariffs appeared for solar panels? Solyndra et al. are huge political black eyes for the powers that be. Billions in subsidies were embarrassingly obviated by Chinese imports. This gave the subsidized the ammunition they needed to make the subsidizers apply tariffs. Thus, a rare tariff has emerged.
How are solar panels different than any other manufactured good? They aren't, with one exception; solar panels have political significance. Solar panel manufacturing represents one of the precious few domestic industries where it is socially acceptable for a certain politicians to give a stump speech. In the leftest milieu, all other manufacturers remain greedy capitalists raping the Earth.
Humble worker making laminate flooring to stock the shelves of Home Depot? You get to compete with dormitory housed, contaminated China-men that dump effluent in the nearest body of water with no consequence. Politician that had your agenda publicly ruined by foreign competition? We have tariffs for that.
The politicians are simply protecting their investment in a politically favored sector of domestic manufacturing. They need results from these investments because some of the factories need to survive at least long enough to provide campaign stops and podiums surrounded cooperative workers sufficient to fill the shot.
Those sites are already prepared with well groomed lawns, easily secured passage to and from the podium and well paid workers that need fear no layoffs between now and November.
Watching your roommate make out with someone would cause then to murder you?
Law enforcement calls events like that 'domestic violence.' It happens every day.
What planet do you live on?!
Find a cop and ask him what planet we're living on. People get beat, stabbed, shot or run over with pickups over sexual matters, including spying, on a daily basis. Had Tyler gutted Ravi in the parking lot it might have made local news, but it would not have surprised a cop, and you would know nothing of it.
unforseen
Unforseen to Ravi, perhaps. As I've said, you ask a cop about this kind of thing and they'll tell you, without hesitation, people are liable to do absolutely anything when sex is involved.
Forgive the lecture, but it's an important life lesson most people eventually pick up on. Some people have to learn it the hard way. Sex is really important. Who you mess around with, or refuse to, how, where, and who else might care can get you killed. Husbands are, without a doubt, the most dangerous.
Maybe it's strange think in these primitive terms, but that is the planet you're on.
Ravi should not be punished for that.
Had Tyler snuffed himself after Ravi exposed him cheating on his girlfriend with another woman there would be absolutely no attention paid beyond local courts. This is a cultural matter and Ravi has made the mistake of pissing off the wrong element.
someone's slashdot comment and then they kill themselves
...and express their paternalism on the iPhones/Pads they tote around.
Whatever. Just don't expect me to pay western regulatory and wage costs for my iPhone 5. That could lead to filthy manufacturing somewhere in N. America!
that 23% is also the difference between a successful product line and one shut down.
Should an isolated product suddenly cost 23% more it will suffer badly in the market, therefore domestic manufacturing is not viable. This argument is unrealistic and naive at best, or disingenuous at worst. Trade with China isn't about iPhones. It's about EVERYTHING being manufactured in Asia. All products, all brands. In fact, it's really about all imports that allow you to accumulate stuff while eluding the regulatory burdens imposed by the government you elect and eluding the cost of employing fellow citizens that don't, for some strange reason, care to live in factory dormitories to provide you with low, low Walmart prices.
The net result of eliminating the cost savings of outsourcing to Asia is that the final cost of all products that currently do not incur domestic manufacturing costs will be higher. No one brand or product will suffer an isolated cost increase; everything will cost more.
Will that mean fewer iPhones and Nexus Galaxies sold? Yes. Will the smart phone market disappear? No. Of course not. People will replace their stuff less frequently and be less reckless with their purchasing in general. That isn't a bad thing. God forbid we do not all replace our $500+ phone every 12 months or suffer with only one x-box.
Let's consider the other side effects of not outsourcing our manufacturing base. Read this to understand the consequences of forsaking the working class for low, low walmart prices. US income disparity is accelerating and this is caused by making our working class compete with dormitory housed disposable Asian workers that live, sleep and breath their foreman's whim, on your behalf.
Another effect will be a vast reduction of environmental impact. The US has a regulatory regime with teeth. Some meat packer in butt-fuck Texas dumps blood in the river and it's news, the EPA swoops in and corrections occur. The Chinese have deadened whole regions of their land recycling your electronics and the Chinese government just chases out the journalists. If you actually care about the Earth and it's fate then your path is clear; stop the export of western pollution to the third world. If you're really just a NIMBYist and can't live without disposably cheap stuff swirling around your life, then continue advocating "free trade."
70% of all imports to the US are tariff free. The largest part of the remaining 30% is fossil fuel in various forms. No other nation has anything approaching the abject surrender of its manufacturing base presently occurring in the US. No presidential candidates, incumbent or otherwise, are seriously advocating any change to this situation. Your Secretary of State is a former Walmart executive.
You frequently encounter a sentiment that goes approximately thus; "the days of prosperity in the US for unskilled workers are over; if you fail to incur huge education debt and assume a place among the well compensated elite you should expect to be miserable, and you deserve it." If that's you then you need to look around. Your lifestyle has an expiration date. Part of the coping mechanism we have used to offset working class decline is lowering the tax burden on lower end of the scale. As a result, 51% of income earners in the US are paying no net federal income tax while we're running a $1.3E12 defic
So you're saying we need to have policies that lead to domestic manufacturing?
WE CAN'T POLLUTE THE WHOLE WORLD!
Why would we want dirty manufacturing and industry in the US??
Better that we have lawyers and doctors and movie directors and investment bankers and graphics artists and social workers and compliance officers and other good clean people like that.
Bubba coal miner needs to get a degree or move to China and take his enabling engineers with him, or go subsist quietly in a trailer park. Either way stop messing up my environment!
The cost of materials and labor have almost no bearing on the price of the average mortgaged suburban home.
The price of the common $180k US 3 bedroom house reflects high demand for these properties. This high demand exists for many reasons; convenient access to employment and business opportunities. neighbors that respect each others property, proximity of urban civilization, i.e. city water, gas supply, paved roads, schools, reliable power, broadband, medical facilities and many others.
If you want cheaper you may compromise one or all of the above; pick up a ghetto ruin for $10k and live in gang-land among violent excons, or move to the sticks where the same square footage sells for $50-80k. You'll need a good truck, utility tractor, generators, a few firearms, the ability to dig the occasional well, repair a septic system and fix propane leaks without burning the place down.
It's the price of urban convenience and a low probability of having video of you or yours getting beat down posted on youbook or facetube. That's the cold truth of it.
What are we producing, why, and for who?
You're producing value to compensate your fellow citizen so that they continue to permit you to either obtain or stay in your heated, cooled, plumbed, safe habitation and play lots of WoW, grow your movie collection, wife swap, get really fat or post brilliant things on slashdot with your abundant leisure time.
Sam Walker. Had a revolver built to his specifications so his cavalry could better blow apart Indians. Ended up shooting Mexicans with them. Spent his whole short life in brutal combat, right up until his dramatic, made for Hollywood death. Several really great opportunities for America bashing in there.
Can't understand why no one has done a big budget film on this guy.
Here is a whistleblower story you won't find on Slashdot because it isn't compatible with your preferred narrative. If you continue to discover large differences between reality and your training as a malcontent you should reconsider the propaganda you indulge.
It's nice to see people in the West finally discussing this. Has it become, at long last, no longer be possible to exempt China (and others) from Kyoto with a straight face?
This conversation has been a long time coming.
Erecting domestic regulatory regimes while exporting our industrial base and its pollution to Asia is hypocritical. We have a moral obligation to correct this. Another consequence of this hypocrisy is a rapidly widening wealth gap between our now surplus working class and everyone else. We have a fiscal imperative to correct this, one you can observe at the Port of Oakland right now. Cheap, plentiful imports flooding mega-stores with shiny disposable stuff has created an ugly consumer culture. We have a cultural need to correct this. The Asian escape valve has permitted us to indulge NIMBY-ism via our bureaucracies and the abuse or our civil law by pressure groups. We're all going to have to grow up a bit to correct this.
Slashdot Mirror
Interminable large scale conventional wars — OR — one nuclear war.
I honestly don't know which is worse. As it is we are at peace waiting for a nuclear war. I'm absolutely certain this is better than being in the middle of a conventional World War IV or V.
The thesis that nukes prevent conflicts between nuclear powers is 100% correct in my opinion. Our propensity to indulge our rage explains the invasion of Iraq; there was a deeply felt need to bloody someone more significant than Afghan warlords after 9/11 and, right or wrong, Iraq happened to be right at the top of the US shit list. Had Saddam been armed with nukes and ballistic missile technology that war would not have happened.
Give China a blue water navy (circa 2017 or so) and a reason and they'll snap up some non-nuclear armed nation's shit just as fast, despite what US hating malcontents tell themselves.
The last time France had >38C temperatures over 14,000 elderly died, many in understaffed hospital wards while government employees were on vacation.
third world indeed
There is no usable public transit system, and what there is smells of urine and feels highly dangerous
Stay away from public transit; that's for 'students' and the welfare state's underclass which are increasingly synonymous and equally dangerous to phone/pad/laptop/credit-card equipped business people. We drive cars in the US.
The power lines are not buried, they are just haphazardly strung up on big poles all over
New construction (<30 years old) doesn't look like that -- power lines are buried. Existing infrastructure doesn't get improved. Municipalities and their quasi-goverment power companies have better things to spend their lavish budgets on than burying power lines.
Oooooook?
Yes, monkeys were deliberately exposed to Ebola in the name of medical research. Yes, they would have had to be euthanized if the experiment had failed. In fact, they'll likely be killed anyhow just to ensure containment of any form of the virus.
Sorry.
BTW mods; there is nothing wrong with the occasional question from our simian relatives. Just leave this sort of thing for those of us that understand Primate and spare the down-mods.
OpenSUSE: Linux for grownups that earn a living in Linux.
I tried. I really, really tried to cope with Gnome 3 on Ubuntu. When that failed, I reverted to Gnome 2 and found it neglected; things that should work, things that worked when Gnome 2 was Ubuntu's desktop, don't.
Back to OpenSUSE. You might need to beat akanodi and nepomuk into submission and the current release installer gets NVidia wrong, but those are simple problems for competent users to overcome. Once squared away you're left with a usable, feature complete desktop. Protip: replace the distro Flash with the Adobe's RPM.
I must agree 100% with the 'mythical user' jab. As distributed by Ubuntu Gnome 3 offers only pain and frustration for power users. Maybe Mint fixes it. I don't know. Burned enough weekend time getting to where I'm happy so I'm sticking with OpenSUSE.
I'm not an Ubuntu hater. I absolutely love Ubuntu Server (which amounts to regression tested Debian) and use it for several production systems. I'll give it a few years, hope for some sort of upheaval among Gnome developers and then try again.
Dear Mark Shuttleworth,
You're product is being hurt by Gnome. Designing exclusively for novices and causal users will not work. Things that succeed emerge from the power user. Make them happy first. Then hide the things they need and love behind a simplified interface. Macs do not lack features or capabilities, they just avoid bothering lusers with complexity. That's why OS-X simultaneously pleases both grandma and Joe Programmer. Please Mark, you're smart enough to understand this. Stop suffering these Gnome guys and their tragically bad design. Linux really needs you to figure this out at some point.
I'd pay a license fee for it. I swear.
Your's sincerely,
The Grownups.
Entry no. 3, in between all the banks, content owners, universities and trail lawyers.
your populace votes for their jobs and temporary income over the environment, what do you do?
Have pressure groups file suit and direct the case to a friendly judge who issues an indefinite injunction. No stink on you. Then, call your broker and put your money in foreign manufacturing where your wealth grows unimpeded by such problems. Then, have the 'community' where your mcmansion is being built zoned for a nice high brick wall all the way around so working class riff raff the use to do stuff like mine copper don't bother you or yours. Finally, attend lots of "non-profit" dinner parties and bask in the environmental kudos of your fellow wealthy politicos.
coal needs to die
Ah no. Coal needs to continue evacuating to Asia where it can be burned safely outside the environment to make low cost solar panels and composite windmills we can then deploy throughout our happy shiny la-la land. You know, where coal is outlawed.
hands up those who think this is in any way bad??
I don't want that industry stuff in the environment. Keep it in Asia.
STOP TRYING TO MESS UP THE ENVIRONMENT!
Just stock my shelves with low low prices and keep that industry filth out of the environment.
The parent is dead on correct. Vermont pulls most of it's power from a nuclear reactor that is slated to be shut down. They use almost no natural gas; it doesn't even register as a fuel source for electric power generation in Vermont according to the feds.
Vermont will replace the nuke with Canadian hydro power. They neatly re-classified huge hydro power operations ( > 200MW ) as 'renewable' so they can sign a big contracts with Hydro Quebec.
They're just trading salmon habitat in Canada for the consequences of gas mining, real or imagined, at home. How noble. Maybe they should ban whale oil derived power next.
That is a well written expression of contemporary conventional wisdom. Group-think, in other words.
The US government has an outfit called the ATF. They are responsible for, among other things, the regulation of imported firearms. They enforce detailed and burdensome standards on foreign manufacturers that export guns to the US. The US also collects an excise tax (for which few exemptions exist) of between 10-11% on imported firearms.
This is highly unusual. Almost no imports suffer such burdens. 70% of all imports to the US are tariff free, and most of the remaining 30% are fossil fuels, which means most manufactured goods are tariff free.
The result of all this is telling. In the US there are multiple, large, profitable firearms manufacturers that have built large advanced manufacturing facilities and are employing thousands of well paid, unionized workers.
The conventional wisdom you offer would have us believe that these US manufactured products would be wholly unaffordable due to the cost of US labor and regulations. The truth is that Sturm Ruger, for instance, has had to stop accepting new orders because, despite their vast and entirely domestic manufacturing operations, they can't keep up with demand. The guns are entirely affordable as evidenced by very high sales.
The truth is our leaders and captains of industry don't believe your conventional wisdom either. Having publicly acquired a black eye due to the failure of certain high profile investments, the US government felt the need to protect another domestic industry with a brand new tariff.
We know exactly what to do to protect domestic industry and we know it works. We just don't bother. The truth is we would rather that nasty industry business be kept far away, preferably somewhere that has next to no regulation and an amble supply of disposable, exploitable labor to maintain those "low, low" walmart prices.
GSA that sets the rates
There are no rates. There is only pull. If you have the pull you can invoke whatever exception is necessary and reserve whatever hotel room you want, because exceptions are baked into all of those rate schedules and spending rules. You only need enough pull to get away with invoking them.
Neely ran his little fiefdom just like a gangster. Mess with him and he ruined your career. There are thousands just like him at every level of government.
Booze and hookers for the Secret Service. Planet wide GSA jet set. $800k/year city managers. One boondoggle 'green energy' political payoff after another.
I'm looking forward to the US credit crisis. It's been a long time coming and nothing short of an extinction level caldera eruption can stop it now.
What, exactly, is your point?
Apple gets singled out due to its extraordinary profile and profitability. That is inevitable and entirely legitimate. The fact that Foxconn also happens to be central to the supply chain of practically everything with a power cord only highlights the vast scope of the issue. Our electronics are the product of exploitation, abuse and the systematic avoidance of regulatory scrutiny, and it is high time for that to end.
Interesting reading the responses to this. There is a lot of doubt about the validity of these claims. I quickly counted at least six responses that attribute the results to over-diagnosis or changing definitions, with affirming replies and no down-mods, with the exception of one profane post.
Are these all 'conservatives' rejecting 'science'?
The tards in power aren't connecting the dots, even now.
When the tards in power have their agenda messed up by foreign competition they know exactly what to do. None of this is lost on them.
They have always understood the situation. The left supports it due to your second point; exporting industry to Asia while simultaneously erecting a vast statist regulatory regime for ourselves is optimal. Meanwhile, the right enjoys huge profit margins earned by manufacturing sans regulation in third world hell holes with disposable labor.
And that, my friends, is how tariffs and subsidies can apply to the same market.
There is no 'puzzle' or bizarre conflict. You can pretend there is if you wish, but that involves neglecting important bits of reality.
Applying tariffs is rare for the US. Over 70% of US imports are tariff free, and most of the remainder are fossil fuels. That means close to 100% of manufactured goods are tariff free.
So why have tariffs appeared for solar panels? Solyndra et al. are huge political black eyes for the powers that be. Billions in subsidies were embarrassingly obviated by Chinese imports. This gave the subsidized the ammunition they needed to make the subsidizers apply tariffs. Thus, a rare tariff has emerged.
How are solar panels different than any other manufactured good? They aren't, with one exception; solar panels have political significance. Solar panel manufacturing represents one of the precious few domestic industries where it is socially acceptable for a certain politicians to give a stump speech. In the leftest milieu, all other manufacturers remain greedy capitalists raping the Earth.
Humble worker making laminate flooring to stock the shelves of Home Depot? You get to compete with dormitory housed, contaminated China-men that dump effluent in the nearest body of water with no consequence. Politician that had your agenda publicly ruined by foreign competition? We have tariffs for that.
The politicians are simply protecting their investment in a politically favored sector of domestic manufacturing. They need results from these investments because some of the factories need to survive at least long enough to provide campaign stops and podiums surrounded cooperative workers sufficient to fill the shot.
Those sites are already prepared with well groomed lawns, easily secured passage to and from the podium and well paid workers that need fear no layoffs between now and November.
Watching your roommate make out with someone would cause then to murder you?
Law enforcement calls events like that 'domestic violence.' It happens every day.
What planet do you live on?!
Find a cop and ask him what planet we're living on. People get beat, stabbed, shot or run over with pickups over sexual matters, including spying, on a daily basis. Had Tyler gutted Ravi in the parking lot it might have made local news, but it would not have surprised a cop, and you would know nothing of it.
unforseen
Unforseen to Ravi, perhaps. As I've said, you ask a cop about this kind of thing and they'll tell you, without hesitation, people are liable to do absolutely anything when sex is involved.
Forgive the lecture, but it's an important life lesson most people eventually pick up on. Some people have to learn it the hard way. Sex is really important. Who you mess around with, or refuse to, how, where, and who else might care can get you killed. Husbands are, without a doubt, the most dangerous.
Maybe it's strange think in these primitive terms, but that is the planet you're on.
Ravi should not be punished for that.
Had Tyler snuffed himself after Ravi exposed him cheating on his girlfriend with another woman there would be absolutely no attention paid beyond local courts. This is a cultural matter and Ravi has made the mistake of pissing off the wrong element.
someone's slashdot comment and then they kill themselves
Apparently.
paternalistic Americans who frequent Whole Foods
...and express their paternalism on the iPhones/Pads they tote around.
Whatever. Just don't expect me to pay western regulatory and wage costs for my iPhone 5. That could lead to filthy manufacturing somewhere in N. America!
If Dodd had been a Republican Senator for thirty years the story would have read "former Republican Senator from Connecticut Chris Dodd..."
that 23% is also the difference between a successful product line and one shut down.
Should an isolated product suddenly cost 23% more it will suffer badly in the market, therefore domestic manufacturing is not viable. This argument is unrealistic and naive at best, or disingenuous at worst. Trade with China isn't about iPhones. It's about EVERYTHING being manufactured in Asia. All products, all brands. In fact, it's really about all imports that allow you to accumulate stuff while eluding the regulatory burdens imposed by the government you elect and eluding the cost of employing fellow citizens that don't, for some strange reason, care to live in factory dormitories to provide you with low, low Walmart prices.
The net result of eliminating the cost savings of outsourcing to Asia is that the final cost of all products that currently do not incur domestic manufacturing costs will be higher. No one brand or product will suffer an isolated cost increase; everything will cost more.
Will that mean fewer iPhones and Nexus Galaxies sold? Yes. Will the smart phone market disappear? No. Of course not. People will replace their stuff less frequently and be less reckless with their purchasing in general. That isn't a bad thing. God forbid we do not all replace our $500+ phone every 12 months or suffer with only one x-box.
Let's consider the other side effects of not outsourcing our manufacturing base. Read this to understand the consequences of forsaking the working class for low, low walmart prices. US income disparity is accelerating and this is caused by making our working class compete with dormitory housed disposable Asian workers that live, sleep and breath their foreman's whim, on your behalf.
Another effect will be a vast reduction of environmental impact. The US has a regulatory regime with teeth. Some meat packer in butt-fuck Texas dumps blood in the river and it's news, the EPA swoops in and corrections occur. The Chinese have deadened whole regions of their land recycling your electronics and the Chinese government just chases out the journalists. If you actually care about the Earth and it's fate then your path is clear; stop the export of western pollution to the third world. If you're really just a NIMBYist and can't live without disposably cheap stuff swirling around your life, then continue advocating "free trade."
70% of all imports to the US are tariff free. The largest part of the remaining 30% is fossil fuel in various forms. No other nation has anything approaching the abject surrender of its manufacturing base presently occurring in the US. No presidential candidates, incumbent or otherwise, are seriously advocating any change to this situation. Your Secretary of State is a former Walmart executive.
You frequently encounter a sentiment that goes approximately thus; "the days of prosperity in the US for unskilled workers are over; if you fail to incur huge education debt and assume a place among the well compensated elite you should expect to be miserable, and you deserve it." If that's you then you need to look around. Your lifestyle has an expiration date. Part of the coping mechanism we have used to offset working class decline is lowering the tax burden on lower end of the scale. As a result, 51% of income earners in the US are paying no net federal income tax while we're running a $1.3E12 defic
So you're saying we need to have policies that lead to domestic manufacturing?
WE CAN'T POLLUTE THE WHOLE WORLD!
Why would we want dirty manufacturing and industry in the US??
Better that we have lawyers and doctors and movie directors and investment bankers and graphics artists and social workers and compliance officers and other good clean people like that.
Bubba coal miner needs to get a degree or move to China and take his enabling engineers with him, or go subsist quietly in a trailer park. Either way stop messing up my environment!
Why does it take 25 years to pay
The cost of materials and labor have almost no bearing on the price of the average mortgaged suburban home.
The price of the common $180k US 3 bedroom house reflects high demand for these properties. This high demand exists for many reasons; convenient access to employment and business opportunities. neighbors that respect each others property, proximity of urban civilization, i.e. city water, gas supply, paved roads, schools, reliable power, broadband, medical facilities and many others.
If you want cheaper you may compromise one or all of the above; pick up a ghetto ruin for $10k and live in gang-land among violent excons, or move to the sticks where the same square footage sells for $50-80k. You'll need a good truck, utility tractor, generators, a few firearms, the ability to dig the occasional well, repair a septic system and fix propane leaks without burning the place down.
It's the price of urban convenience and a low probability of having video of you or yours getting beat down posted on youbook or facetube. That's the cold truth of it.
What are we producing, why, and for who?
You're producing value to compensate your fellow citizen so that they continue to permit you to either obtain or stay in your heated, cooled, plumbed, safe habitation and play lots of WoW, grow your movie collection, wife swap, get really fat or post brilliant things on slashdot with your abundant leisure time.
Sam Walker. Had a revolver built to his specifications so his cavalry could better blow apart Indians. Ended up shooting Mexicans with them. Spent his whole short life in brutal combat, right up until his dramatic, made for Hollywood death. Several really great opportunities for America bashing in there.
Can't understand why no one has done a big budget film on this guy.
Volkswagen is not an American company
It's a German company, where workers are protected by EU trade regulation from competition with disposable Asian labor. Must be nice.
I would have expected ... I think...
Here is a whistleblower story you won't find on Slashdot because it isn't compatible with your preferred narrative. If you continue to discover large differences between reality and your training as a malcontent you should reconsider the propaganda you indulge.
It's nice to see people in the West finally discussing this. Has it become, at long last, no longer be possible to exempt China (and others) from Kyoto with a straight face?
This conversation has been a long time coming.
Erecting domestic regulatory regimes while exporting our industrial base and its pollution to Asia is hypocritical. We have a moral obligation to correct this. Another consequence of this hypocrisy is a rapidly widening wealth gap between our now surplus working class and everyone else. We have a fiscal imperative to correct this, one you can observe at the Port of Oakland right now. Cheap, plentiful imports flooding mega-stores with shiny disposable stuff has created an ugly consumer culture. We have a cultural need to correct this. The Asian escape valve has permitted us to indulge NIMBY-ism via our bureaucracies and the abuse or our civil law by pressure groups. We're all going to have to grow up a bit to correct this.