actually, a significant factor to european, and global, economic crises is a couple of centuries of economists not having a damn clue what they're talking about.
(short version: the nation is NOT a meaningful economic unit, and the cities, which Are, have stalled in their growth cycles in sufficiant numbers that the ones that Haven't are no longer compensating. also? free trade agreements (or just generally tarrifs set lower than they should be, taking into account the cost of import vs the cost of local production vs the money available to Spend on that.) invert the primary step in the process that drives that growth, stalling the growth cycle and causing intermittent shrinkage. that's right, your large continent size trade blocs are a Bad Thing.)
i remember seeing a video that gave a prime example of how bad that could be.
there was at least one major example that was so baffled by the NZ accent that, if memory serves, they had to release a separate version that could compensate... (unfortunately neither my memory nor google-skills are sufficiant to the task of finding and linking that in a time frame smaller than the point at which it's really, REALLY not worth my time.)
the old system was nice. bog standard 'square image of your choosing' deal.
you could (and many people did!) by shiny awesome new ones, or get them on bonus preorder discs for games, or what have you.
so, yeah... all those nice non-refundable shinies you payed for?
system update.
they no longer exist. you get these crappy puppet things instead.
oh, those wallpapers (actually entire themes) we made you Pay Money For? those ones that were all designed based on our icons and things being in certain places? yeah, we're going to compleatly redo the interface so the only part of those you can see is the BLANK part designed for the ICONS TO GO ON ... the rest is going to be covered up by a white Desk that we now put the icons on. congratulations.
(... that was the worst jump, but it's got worse since.)
not as bad as sony's other OS disaster, but pretty bad.
but the guy who was doing it couldn't get the funding to do anything meaningful with it until after the war.
(or at least, that's what i remember of the story. had the war ministry, or whoever was running that bit of government at the time, picked up on it, the british could have actually had better jets, sooner, than the germans. i can't remember why they didn't... a mix of legitimate and practical resourcing and production issues and the typical 'it's new, therefore beyond us, therefore we want nothing to do with it.' mentality, if i remember rightly.)
most modern economic theory is built on the assumption that the nation is a (and in fact, the) meaningful base unit.
it really, really isn't.
(seriously, how can Russia, the USA, India, Belgium, Taiwan, Fiji and the Vatican all be the same sized unit in a meaningful system?)
cities, and the regions they most closely interact with as a consequence, on the other hand, are. (city, in this case, being defined as a settlement which undergoes a cycle of import replacement and thus expansion of it's internal economy and thus expansion of it's exports and thus imports More, of new and different things.)
most economic policy breaks because it's raw data is the combined (and often averaged) information from each city-region... which isn't terribly useful.
(on a fun note, the problem with free trade is that it reverses the import replacement element and instead of replacing imports with local production, replaces local production with imports, thus shrinking what is available for export, thus shrinking how much can be imported. any situation where tariffs on imports are too low will do this, of course. and why get rid of them anyway? it's not the sellers who pay them, it's the customer. and they go into the coffers of the government, (at whatever level) which is, functionally, another producer, keeping it in circulation internally (at least within the country) and not actually disrupting the flow of goods and services. the Percentage values make it look like the seller is missing out, but the Actual values are at worst unchanged, provided the economy in question is doing well enough to support the resulting price.)
the above is Highly sumerised.
go read 'the economy of cities' by Jane Jacobs for a more detailed explanation of the city growth bit.
wow...
short version: if he's been 'educated' in economics as the current theory goes, it's more reasonable to expect him to understand the patent bit than to have any grasp on the reality of how an economy actually works, or even what it IS.
large chunks of Smith's work are undermined by the fact that he assumed (like pretty much everyone else of the day and far too many even now) that the nation was a meaningful economic... thingy.
this being the entire Point of representative democracy, btw.
entrenchment of the status quo. stability.
i mean, all up, it's Probably better than succession wars and the like, but it's a hell of a lot harder to get back on track when it goes off the rails... mostly because it doesn't. the rails just get built straight into a disassembly device, while all the switches and signals all still say that everything's working fine.
humm. i begin to suspect techdirt may be worrying someone ... we seem to be getting more ignorant trolls....
i mean, come on troll-folk, at least be witty! that way you have some redeeming value. and that way people will actually read what you say rather than ignoring it!
ok, to be fair, they'll probably read, laugh, Then ignore, but stilL!
i think you missed the part where this was a comment on how bad the USA is, not how good China is.
that said, much as it is sad, it's partially to be expected:
all empires rise and fall (though some manage to claw their way back up, after a fashion) and nations go through cycles of liberty and oppression. the cycles are usually measured in centuries, mind, though not always.
just shows Brazil on a major upswing and the USA on it's way down.
the shear ignorance and/or stupidity required to claim that ANY US politician that actually manages to attain a position of influence is 'socialist' is ridiculous.
they can only attain those positions by being actively pro-corporation, which is quite incompatible with socialism.
(unless you're talking National Socialism, which is actually Facism taken to a stupid extream and with other bits tacked onto it. which is a different thing.)
seriously. anyone attempting to claim that anyone capable of actually getting into power in the US is left wing doesn't have a damn clue what they're talking about.
see, i figure, under Labour, we'd have actually heard about this directly and there would have been some debate... after which they most likely still would have ignored it and signed the bloody stupid thing, unless facing riots and large scale protests and the like.
National just hides it... that way when it's already on teh books and labour gets in and is forced to enforce it, they can start using it as an attack option. no one ever remembers who signed things like this in the first place.
side effect of National's general policy being 'screw the country, we get money!' and not having a damn clue beyond that.
do we have a functional pirate party? 'cause if we do i'm totaly voting for them. (or maybe the progressives, if they're still functional, i guess....)
both major parties have this ... psychotic... obsession with free trade deals, particularly with the US, compleatly missing the fact that free trade is only mutually benificial if both parties are about the same size economically and have little or no overlap in what they produce. otherwise it just locks the little guy into a downward spiral by make it harder and harder to establish anything new because it must compete with established imports right off the bat.
On the post: Here's A Surprise: EU Green Party Adopts The Pirate Party's Position On Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Here's A Surprise: EU Green Party Adopts The Pirate Party's Position On Copyright
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On the post: Here's A Surprise: EU Green Party Adopts The Pirate Party's Position On Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Here's A Surprise: EU Green Party Adopts The Pirate Party's Position On Copyright
Re: Re: Re:
(short version: the nation is NOT a meaningful economic unit, and the cities, which Are, have stalled in their growth cycles in sufficiant numbers that the ones that Haven't are no longer compensating. also? free trade agreements (or just generally tarrifs set lower than they should be, taking into account the cost of import vs the cost of local production vs the money available to Spend on that.) invert the primary step in the process that drives that growth, stalling the growth cycle and causing intermittent shrinkage. that's right, your large continent size trade blocs are a Bad Thing.)
On the post: Did Apple Spill The Beans On Its New Voice Assistant Product 24 Years Ago?
Re: Does it work in the wild?
i remember seeing a video that gave a prime example of how bad that could be.
there was at least one major example that was so baffled by the NZ accent that, if memory serves, they had to release a separate version that could compensate... (unfortunately neither my memory nor google-skills are sufficiant to the task of finding and linking that in a time frame smaller than the point at which it's really, REALLY not worth my time.)
On the post: Did Apple Spill The Beans On Its New Voice Assistant Product 24 Years Ago?
Re: Re: Seriously?
which replaced the old system.
the old system was nice. bog standard 'square image of your choosing' deal.
you could (and many people did!) by shiny awesome new ones, or get them on bonus preorder discs for games, or what have you.
so, yeah... all those nice non-refundable shinies you payed for?
system update.
they no longer exist. you get these crappy puppet things instead.
oh, those wallpapers (actually entire themes) we made you Pay Money For? those ones that were all designed based on our icons and things being in certain places? yeah, we're going to compleatly redo the interface so the only part of those you can see is the BLANK part designed for the ICONS TO GO ON ... the rest is going to be covered up by a white Desk that we now put the icons on. congratulations.
(... that was the worst jump, but it's got worse since.)
not as bad as sony's other OS disaster, but pretty bad.
On the post: Did Apple Spill The Beans On Its New Voice Assistant Product 24 Years Ago?
Re: Re: re:...
you do realise that, right?
kinda significant.
On the post: Did Apple Spill The Beans On Its New Voice Assistant Product 24 Years Ago?
Re: Re: When A Company Starts Litigating, It Stops Innovating
making sure there's money to pay for it? not so much.
On the post: Did Apple Spill The Beans On Its New Voice Assistant Product 24 Years Ago?
Re: Re: Re: Re: ...
On the post: New UK Banknote Celebrates James Watt, Patent Bully and Monopolist
Re: Re: Better Candidates
On the post: New UK Banknote Celebrates James Watt, Patent Bully and Monopolist
Re: Re: Better Candidates
but the guy who was doing it couldn't get the funding to do anything meaningful with it until after the war.
(or at least, that's what i remember of the story. had the war ministry, or whoever was running that bit of government at the time, picked up on it, the british could have actually had better jets, sooner, than the germans. i can't remember why they didn't... a mix of legitimate and practical resourcing and production issues and the typical 'it's new, therefore beyond us, therefore we want nothing to do with it.' mentality, if i remember rightly.)
On the post: New UK Banknote Celebrates James Watt, Patent Bully and Monopolist
Re:
most modern economic theory is built on the assumption that the nation is a (and in fact, the) meaningful base unit.
it really, really isn't.
(seriously, how can Russia, the USA, India, Belgium, Taiwan, Fiji and the Vatican all be the same sized unit in a meaningful system?)
cities, and the regions they most closely interact with as a consequence, on the other hand, are. (city, in this case, being defined as a settlement which undergoes a cycle of import replacement and thus expansion of it's internal economy and thus expansion of it's exports and thus imports More, of new and different things.)
most economic policy breaks because it's raw data is the combined (and often averaged) information from each city-region... which isn't terribly useful.
(on a fun note, the problem with free trade is that it reverses the import replacement element and instead of replacing imports with local production, replaces local production with imports, thus shrinking what is available for export, thus shrinking how much can be imported. any situation where tariffs on imports are too low will do this, of course. and why get rid of them anyway? it's not the sellers who pay them, it's the customer. and they go into the coffers of the government, (at whatever level) which is, functionally, another producer, keeping it in circulation internally (at least within the country) and not actually disrupting the flow of goods and services. the Percentage values make it look like the seller is missing out, but the Actual values are at worst unchanged, provided the economy in question is doing well enough to support the resulting price.)
the above is Highly sumerised.
go read 'the economy of cities' by Jane Jacobs for a more detailed explanation of the city growth bit.
wow...
short version: if he's been 'educated' in economics as the current theory goes, it's more reasonable to expect him to understand the patent bit than to have any grasp on the reality of how an economy actually works, or even what it IS.
On the post: New UK Banknote Celebrates James Watt, Patent Bully and Monopolist
Re:
it's not.
(city-regions, on the other hand, are.)
On the post: Missing From The Table Again: Consumers Left Out Of Australian Meetings On Copyright
Re:
that bit right there is your problem.
On the post: Missing From The Table Again: Consumers Left Out Of Australian Meetings On Copyright
Re: Re:
entrenchment of the status quo. stability.
i mean, all up, it's Probably better than succession wars and the like, but it's a hell of a lot harder to get back on track when it goes off the rails... mostly because it doesn't. the rails just get built straight into a disassembly device, while all the switches and signals all still say that everything's working fine.
On the post: Brazil Drafts An 'Anti-ACTA': A Civil Rights-Based Framework For The Internet
i mean, come on troll-folk, at least be witty! that way you have some redeeming value. and that way people will actually read what you say rather than ignoring it!
ok, to be fair, they'll probably read, laugh, Then ignore, but stilL!
On the post: Brazil Drafts An 'Anti-ACTA': A Civil Rights-Based Framework For The Internet
Re: Re: Sad Daze
that said, much as it is sad, it's partially to be expected:
all empires rise and fall (though some manage to claw their way back up, after a fashion) and nations go through cycles of liberty and oppression. the cycles are usually measured in centuries, mind, though not always.
just shows Brazil on a major upswing and the USA on it's way down.
On the post: Brazil Drafts An 'Anti-ACTA': A Civil Rights-Based Framework For The Internet
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Brazil Drafts An 'Anti-ACTA': A Civil Rights-Based Framework For The Internet
Re: Re: Re: Re:
go find a very tall cliff
jump off it.
the shear ignorance and/or stupidity required to claim that ANY US politician that actually manages to attain a position of influence is 'socialist' is ridiculous.
they can only attain those positions by being actively pro-corporation, which is quite incompatible with socialism.
(unless you're talking National Socialism, which is actually Facism taken to a stupid extream and with other bits tacked onto it. which is a different thing.)
seriously. anyone attempting to claim that anyone capable of actually getting into power in the US is left wing doesn't have a damn clue what they're talking about.
On the post: As Countries Sign ACTA, Many Finally Admit Their Copyright Laws Will Need To Change
Re:
National just hides it... that way when it's already on teh books and labour gets in and is forced to enforce it, they can start using it as an attack option. no one ever remembers who signed things like this in the first place.
side effect of National's general policy being 'screw the country, we get money!' and not having a damn clue beyond that.
do we have a functional pirate party? 'cause if we do i'm totaly voting for them. (or maybe the progressives, if they're still functional, i guess....)
both major parties have this ... psychotic... obsession with free trade deals, particularly with the US, compleatly missing the fact that free trade is only mutually benificial if both parties are about the same size economically and have little or no overlap in what they produce. otherwise it just locks the little guy into a downward spiral by make it harder and harder to establish anything new because it must compete with established imports right off the bat.
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