It's like this article was written by a villain dreamed up by Ayn Rand.
The author's claim that you can't link cause and effect is utter hogwash. He claims you can't say that an apple falls to the Earth because of gravity, which is stupid because gravity is DEFINED by that action. What we don't KNOW is what causes the phenomena we have labelled as gravity. It is a very poor example. He then proceeds to talk about people assuming causation in an ANIMATED MOVIE. Well, of course one ball hitting the other ball on a screen didn't cause it to move. They are just light and shadow in patterns that change with time! Claiming that the people have faulty perception is like claiming that people who read superhero comics really believe in people with superpowers, and can't tell that they are looking at a piece of paper with ink on it. He ignores the suspension of disbelief that the original experimenters introduced when they chose to use a medium that wasn't based on physical objects.
This guy just presents fallacy after fallacy and expects us to accept his dumb conclusion that science is somehow "over". Fuck that, and fuck him.
I see, so waiting for months to get permits is not a problem, then? You can do EVERYTHING right, and a city council can shut down your operation at the drop of a hat. You think that is conducive to business?
You sure are aggressive. Makes me think you don't believe a word you are saying.
Yes, you can. "The people" owned them, and they were managed by the government, and "the people" reaped the rewards of their production according to their "need".
Definitions must be clear and consistent, lest those with perverse and deadly ideologies twist words to make it seem as though their failure was not one of ideology, but of implementation. Capitalism is great because it doesn't need perfect implementation to work. It is a sliding scale. The less you meddle, the better the outcome. The more you meddle, the worse the outcome. Simple as that. With Communism, they try over and over, and keep hitting the same speed bumps, namely that individuals have to be allowed to make their own value judgements based on honest information from the market (ie allocation of limited resources must be optimized via pricing mechanisms).
You know, you could spend some time writing an actual reply instead of acting like a little punk and spewing pointless insults. But then, that is par for the course for those who want what others have but don't care to work for it.
Right, because they let them do all that in Germany and Japan.
Americans use the same excuses over and over as they watch their industrial base rust away to nothing. Blame the foreigners. Don't look inward, for fuck's sake.
Care to elaborate on that? I spent a year trying to open a small winery and was done in by the insane level of regulation at the Federal level. I wasn't even allowed to start production until I had a label, and the label required four revisions, with them taking a MONTH for each one. I ran out of seed money before I could start my first batch. Note that the state regulatory agency had much more common sense requirements, and MORE OF THEM, and I had them handled within three months.
But hey, don't let that stop you from railing against individualism and common sense at the altar of the almighty state.
You do realize that that temp worker program is providing you with a job, where you would otherwise have none, right? If they got rid of the regulation stating that you must be provided with all the benefits of a permanent worker, you could stay on, and not be classed out of raises and promotions. But instead, the government has stepped in and created an underclass. And now you want someone who wants to create jobs to LEAVE?
The USA is going down in flames, yet no-one can see the cause. Sad.
You can say that all you want, but it won't be long before "they" no longer need the first world. "They" will be quite content to sell in Asia, which by then will be the largest market in the world by a wide margin, and leave you to rot in your self-imposed 3rd world kleptocracy.
lol, go visit China 40 years ago and then come back to today and tell us all how much worse off they are now with a capitalist economy than they were with a Communist one.
No, they WERE communist up until relations opened up with Nixon, when they started shifting toward a free market economy.
Free markets rapidly develop countries that were devastated by previous regimes. There is little exploitation here. The few places within that economy where people are kept as slave labor are generally routed out, and those responsible are put to death (the last I heard of was five or ten years ago). These factories are NOT slave labor. The people are free to quit when they see a better opportunity, and they are free to go back to their rural family farms if they find city life too hard. Of course, that means giving up the increased purchasing power, and living in the poverty they came from originally, which is why people don't do it.
And I don't know what you are smoking. You can't have a capitalist economy where the government owns most or all of the businesses. Come on.
They can do it and they are willing. It's just too expensive to comply with American regulations. Period, end of story. That is why American manufacturing has crumbled, and why Chinese manufacturing has bootstrapped to the top.
Wages have almost nothing to do with it. It is purely a matter of total worker productivity, and regulatory compliance is NOT productive, yet it takes a huge chunk out of the average productivity even before they force shutdowns or create other problems due to shifting regulatory requirements.
The barbarians aren't at the gates, they're inside, and they've been looting for 40 years. Almost nothing left at this point but a hollowed out shell.
Charles Dickens was a real busybody, wasn't he? Funny thing is, the actions he wanted old Scrooge to take actually harmed society more than they helped the few lucky people who benefitted from his charity.
Not necessarily. If the point is to improve the workers' living conditions, then a boycott of just their largest customer would produce the appropriate amount of pressure to force change in the entire industry (as wages and working conditions are competitive). Even just changing the conditions throughout Foxconn would be a big enough achievement, as they make electronics for pretty much everyone.
ITT people who don't understand the difference between labor costs, capital costs, and regulatory costs.
Here's a hint: labor costs are very low compared to capital costs. Capital costs in America are LESS than in China, but that gap is rapidly diminishing. But regulatory costs are much, MUCH higher in the US. This is why manufacturing has been fleeing America.
No, it is because the cost and time investment required to overcome regulatory hurdles in this country are too high. The cost of accommodating humans in the manufacturing process is low, PERIOD. It is the fact that in this country you have to have a person devoted to compliance of one kind or another for every two workers, and that that compliance person, or their corresponding government compliance enforcer can shut down anything at any time for any number of continuously changing reasons.
You sound bitter. The customers don't bend over backwards for Apple, and suppliers SHOULD bend over backwards for their clients.
I hate to tell you, but the same is true of consumers EVERYWHERE. That is human nature, and it is a good thing. The workers can stand up for themselves. It is nice to use boycott to support them, if you can muster the support, but it isn't necessary. This is the reason that unions exist--to protect worker's rights in developing countries (and in developed countries during severe depressions).
No, that won't work. The regulatory regime in this country is simply too overbearing. Compliance is too expensive. Get Apple to switch away from Foxconn, and they will just move to another Chinese manufacturer, likely one that treats its workers better. Raise a ruckus over Chinese manufacturers, and they will move to some other country other than America. It will be hard to complain when they move to Germany, where the regulatory regime is industry friendly even with high taxes and high wages.
Uhh, I think you miss the fact that the entire scientific apparatus has turned against the basic principles of science here, raising the bar on those who issue papers which contain evidence against global warming while lowering the bar on papers that support the hypothesis of global warming. Climate science is the most closed off branch of science I have ever seen, and the fact is that without global warming, their grant funding dries up. Sort of pollutes the peer review process a bit, don't you think?
Also, anecdotes work both ways. There were times when the consensus was wrong, and not just wrong, but adamantly wrong, refusing to even discuss the issue. This was primarily the case when science and religion were mixed, whether talking about the motions of heavenly bodies or the origin of species (the original controversy, not Kansas and Co.). Similar human impulses are at work here, whether or not the hypothesis is correct.
No, too much population without capital investment (cooling in that case) is bad. Our own society invested a great deal in capital, which has allowed our population to bloom from a few hundred million to billions, even as the average standard of living has risen spectacularly.
Depends which economists you cite. A certain prevalent school of economics is the modern day equivalent of a school of witch doctors. Just because witch doctors don't improve survival rates of their patients doesn't mean that real doctors don't.
Yeah, because global warming has nothing to do with physics! Especially not with physics in space, which is nothing like the upper atmosphere in any way.
All political problems are economic problems. You must weigh pros and cons. If taking action to stop CO2 based global warming requires a major reduction in industrial output, millions or billions of people will die. That is a fact. The world is dependent on fossil fuel based agriculture, which is dependent on energy and industrial output.
You can't just jab sticks into the gearbox of the world economy and expect things to turn out fine. It has been tried on smaller scales before, and it always turns out disastrously.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations. You've invented the laser guided missile launcher.
It's like this article was written by a villain dreamed up by Ayn Rand.
The author's claim that you can't link cause and effect is utter hogwash. He claims you can't say that an apple falls to the Earth because of gravity, which is stupid because gravity is DEFINED by that action. What we don't KNOW is what causes the phenomena we have labelled as gravity. It is a very poor example. He then proceeds to talk about people assuming causation in an ANIMATED MOVIE. Well, of course one ball hitting the other ball on a screen didn't cause it to move. They are just light and shadow in patterns that change with time! Claiming that the people have faulty perception is like claiming that people who read superhero comics really believe in people with superpowers, and can't tell that they are looking at a piece of paper with ink on it. He ignores the suspension of disbelief that the original experimenters introduced when they chose to use a medium that wasn't based on physical objects.
This guy just presents fallacy after fallacy and expects us to accept his dumb conclusion that science is somehow "over". Fuck that, and fuck him.
Fine, we'll leave. Enjoy your third world lifestyle. Maybe you will be able to regulate everyone into millionaires.
I see, so waiting for months to get permits is not a problem, then? You can do EVERYTHING right, and a city council can shut down your operation at the drop of a hat. You think that is conducive to business?
You sure are aggressive. Makes me think you don't believe a word you are saying.
Yes, you can. "The people" owned them, and they were managed by the government, and "the people" reaped the rewards of their production according to their "need".
Definitions must be clear and consistent, lest those with perverse and deadly ideologies twist words to make it seem as though their failure was not one of ideology, but of implementation. Capitalism is great because it doesn't need perfect implementation to work. It is a sliding scale. The less you meddle, the better the outcome. The more you meddle, the worse the outcome. Simple as that. With Communism, they try over and over, and keep hitting the same speed bumps, namely that individuals have to be allowed to make their own value judgements based on honest information from the market (ie allocation of limited resources must be optimized via pricing mechanisms).
That's nice. You can continue ignoring reality now.
You know, you could spend some time writing an actual reply instead of acting like a little punk and spewing pointless insults. But then, that is par for the course for those who want what others have but don't care to work for it.
Right, because they let them do all that in Germany and Japan.
Americans use the same excuses over and over as they watch their industrial base rust away to nothing. Blame the foreigners. Don't look inward, for fuck's sake.
Care to elaborate on that? I spent a year trying to open a small winery and was done in by the insane level of regulation at the Federal level. I wasn't even allowed to start production until I had a label, and the label required four revisions, with them taking a MONTH for each one. I ran out of seed money before I could start my first batch. Note that the state regulatory agency had much more common sense requirements, and MORE OF THEM, and I had them handled within three months.
But hey, don't let that stop you from railing against individualism and common sense at the altar of the almighty state.
What exactly is the goal of these regulations?
You do realize that that temp worker program is providing you with a job, where you would otherwise have none, right? If they got rid of the regulation stating that you must be provided with all the benefits of a permanent worker, you could stay on, and not be classed out of raises and promotions. But instead, the government has stepped in and created an underclass. And now you want someone who wants to create jobs to LEAVE?
The USA is going down in flames, yet no-one can see the cause. Sad.
You can say that all you want, but it won't be long before "they" no longer need the first world. "They" will be quite content to sell in Asia, which by then will be the largest market in the world by a wide margin, and leave you to rot in your self-imposed 3rd world kleptocracy.
lol, go visit China 40 years ago and then come back to today and tell us all how much worse off they are now with a capitalist economy than they were with a Communist one.
No, they WERE communist up until relations opened up with Nixon, when they started shifting toward a free market economy.
Free markets rapidly develop countries that were devastated by previous regimes. There is little exploitation here. The few places within that economy where people are kept as slave labor are generally routed out, and those responsible are put to death (the last I heard of was five or ten years ago). These factories are NOT slave labor. The people are free to quit when they see a better opportunity, and they are free to go back to their rural family farms if they find city life too hard. Of course, that means giving up the increased purchasing power, and living in the poverty they came from originally, which is why people don't do it.
And I don't know what you are smoking. You can't have a capitalist economy where the government owns most or all of the businesses. Come on.
They can do it and they are willing. It's just too expensive to comply with American regulations. Period, end of story. That is why American manufacturing has crumbled, and why Chinese manufacturing has bootstrapped to the top.
Wages have almost nothing to do with it. It is purely a matter of total worker productivity, and regulatory compliance is NOT productive, yet it takes a huge chunk out of the average productivity even before they force shutdowns or create other problems due to shifting regulatory requirements.
The barbarians aren't at the gates, they're inside, and they've been looting for 40 years. Almost nothing left at this point but a hollowed out shell.
Charles Dickens was a real busybody, wasn't he? Funny thing is, the actions he wanted old Scrooge to take actually harmed society more than they helped the few lucky people who benefitted from his charity.
http://mises.org/daily/573
Not necessarily. If the point is to improve the workers' living conditions, then a boycott of just their largest customer would produce the appropriate amount of pressure to force change in the entire industry (as wages and working conditions are competitive). Even just changing the conditions throughout Foxconn would be a big enough achievement, as they make electronics for pretty much everyone.
ITT people who don't understand the difference between labor costs, capital costs, and regulatory costs.
Here's a hint: labor costs are very low compared to capital costs. Capital costs in America are LESS than in China, but that gap is rapidly diminishing. But regulatory costs are much, MUCH higher in the US. This is why manufacturing has been fleeing America.
No, it is because the cost and time investment required to overcome regulatory hurdles in this country are too high. The cost of accommodating humans in the manufacturing process is low, PERIOD. It is the fact that in this country you have to have a person devoted to compliance of one kind or another for every two workers, and that that compliance person, or their corresponding government compliance enforcer can shut down anything at any time for any number of continuously changing reasons.
You sound bitter. The customers don't bend over backwards for Apple, and suppliers SHOULD bend over backwards for their clients.
I hate to tell you, but the same is true of consumers EVERYWHERE. That is human nature, and it is a good thing. The workers can stand up for themselves. It is nice to use boycott to support them, if you can muster the support, but it isn't necessary. This is the reason that unions exist--to protect worker's rights in developing countries (and in developed countries during severe depressions).
No, that won't work. The regulatory regime in this country is simply too overbearing. Compliance is too expensive. Get Apple to switch away from Foxconn, and they will just move to another Chinese manufacturer, likely one that treats its workers better. Raise a ruckus over Chinese manufacturers, and they will move to some other country other than America. It will be hard to complain when they move to Germany, where the regulatory regime is industry friendly even with high taxes and high wages.
Uhh, I think you miss the fact that the entire scientific apparatus has turned against the basic principles of science here, raising the bar on those who issue papers which contain evidence against global warming while lowering the bar on papers that support the hypothesis of global warming. Climate science is the most closed off branch of science I have ever seen, and the fact is that without global warming, their grant funding dries up. Sort of pollutes the peer review process a bit, don't you think?
Also, anecdotes work both ways. There were times when the consensus was wrong, and not just wrong, but adamantly wrong, refusing to even discuss the issue. This was primarily the case when science and religion were mixed, whether talking about the motions of heavenly bodies or the origin of species (the original controversy, not Kansas and Co.). Similar human impulses are at work here, whether or not the hypothesis is correct.
No, too much population without capital investment (cooling in that case) is bad. Our own society invested a great deal in capital, which has allowed our population to bloom from a few hundred million to billions, even as the average standard of living has risen spectacularly.
Depends which economists you cite. A certain prevalent school of economics is the modern day equivalent of a school of witch doctors. Just because witch doctors don't improve survival rates of their patients doesn't mean that real doctors don't.
Yeah, because global warming has nothing to do with physics! Especially not with physics in space, which is nothing like the upper atmosphere in any way.
All political problems are economic problems. You must weigh pros and cons. If taking action to stop CO2 based global warming requires a major reduction in industrial output, millions or billions of people will die. That is a fact. The world is dependent on fossil fuel based agriculture, which is dependent on energy and industrial output.
You can't just jab sticks into the gearbox of the world economy and expect things to turn out fine. It has been tried on smaller scales before, and it always turns out disastrously.