* Marcin Tustin wrote: > Clearly, it would be massively wrong for ghana (or wherever) to protect > agriculture; meanwhile it is excellent for the industrialised nations to > massively subsidise farmers' production, then when they produce so much that > it is worth next to nothing at sale, the state (or states, as in the EU) to > buy lots of it and burn it, or dump it on the world agricultural market. > Bear in mind that although almost worthless at sale, the farmers have > already been paid for it (through subsidy). Also, if they sell outside their > trade community, they get paid more by the state. Selling it on the world > markets then massively depresses the price (because the farmers can give it > away and be guaranteed of income), so that farmers not massively subsidised > can't compete, no matter how efficient they are. Liquidate the Western > farmer! Make him sink or swim on his own feet (and hands, and other major > bits applicable in swimming).
This is completely off topic, so I should shut up. But, at least in the UK, this is a really horrible problem. Clearly farming is subsidised hugely and clearly this is not a good thing in a lot of ways. But the simple answer - stop doing that - means that farming probably simply stops in the UK to first order (like, say, steel-making has all-but stopped). Well, OK, so what, is this a bad thing? Maybe not. Unfortunately it *is* a bad thing, because our landscape is a result of thousands of years of farming. If you just stop things change, quite fast, and not perhaps in good ways. We're not a country with huge bits of untouched wilderness - even the bits people think of as wilderness like the highlands of Scotland are actually manufactured landscapes (manufactured by sheep farming in this case). So you can't just stop in the UK, or at least not without huge impact on the environment we live in. But the current situation is clearly fouled-up beyond belief. I think, personally, that the right solution is to explicitly say that much of the purpose of farming in the UK is to preserve our landscape, and aim funding at *that* rather than at something else which might incidentally achieve that, but actually doesn't very well.
So really, perhaps it's less off-topic: the thing that seems to me important in all this is to make sure you direct money, or effort, or whatever at what you actually want to achieve, rather than at something else which might help you to achieve what you want. I've always been suspicious of business models which rely on this kind of finessing. Things like Tivo are a good example - you need a subscription - why? I guess so they can data-mine your viewing habits or something. Why not just sell you the box that does the cool things you want. Mobile phones were for a long time similar (phone hugely subsidised, binding contract used to fund the cost), but may be becoming less so now.
"Marcin Tustin" <Marc...@GUeswhatthisbitisfor.mindless.com> writes: > I'm sympathetic to this, but it goes a little too close to caveat emptor > in a market where most purchasers totally unqualified and lacking in > confidence.
Anything other than "caveat emptor" breeds an audience of idiots.
Free markets work not at all if the consumer relies on the vendor to be the one with all the brains.
> > > It winds up in the same sort of thing as internal use of GPLed
Nope. Andy rarely posts about the GPL, and didn't post that. (Andy occasionally points out that the beast of Redmond implemented Stallman's dream, and, like most people who get what they want, Stallman doesn't see it and is pissed because it didn't work out as he intended. Who'd have ever thought that he wouldn't be deciding how the hardware tax revenues were allocated to software developers.)
However, this is the sort of quote confusion that Andy uses as a reason to delete attribution lines.
> > "Depletion of natural resources" is fairly industrial age.
> Yes it is. However, what we have in these situations is a colonial > exploitation of the natural resources of a country with the cost of > infrastructure for that exploitation being put onto the public's head, > and the profits being almost entirely taken out of the country. > Indeed this has gone on for quite some time, as it is a basic function > of imperialism.
Except that the trade barriers don't exist, so it really isn't much different than how GM treats random towns in Michigan.
And, as I noted, if things really are that way, there's a moral obligation for YOU to do better by those folks. If there's excess profits in the hands of evil doers because the good refuse to compete....
> > Today, it tends to divert "noble savage" labor into something that > > we'd call sweatshops, something that the "savages" strongly prefer > > to THEIR alternatives.
> This is a very common argument, but I have never seen anything but > anecdotal evidence to "support" it.
There's the small fact that the workers show up. That's the only evidence that you'll ever find that workers prefer one job to another.
Precisely what evidence would you find acceptable? Make sure that it applies in other situations, such as your OWN employment.
> For one, everyone outside the > first-world is not a subsistence farmer.
Interestingly enough, there was no previous mention of subsistence farming. Why the sneering mis-attribution?
Of course, their previous state of employment isn't all that relevant. They show up, ergo, they prefer it.
> There is not this decision > between borderline starvation thru farming and scavenging and working > in a sweatshop where suddenly starvation is not a problem.
Yet, still they show up. Stupid savages. They need to have their options reduced by moralists.
> Secondly, > the 10k that get the sweatshop jobs may appreciate their increased > earnings over their countrymen (money works that way, it's how much > you have in RELATION to others in the market that determines it's > value) but that doesn't address the effects it has on the population > as a whole.
The local Nike plant does increase the amount of money circulating in the local economy. (Otherwise, the folks won't show up.) Some of that money will go to buying goods that they'd like from outside. Other of that money will go to higher prices for the local goods that the Nike workers would have otherwise produced.
Of course, it is degrading work, making shoes for spoiled white folk.
> Lastly, why should they, or anyone for that matter, be > satisfied with subsistence labor?
They don't have to be satisfied. They merely deserve to make the best choice from among the options they have, and reducing their options doesn't help them, no matter how much better you'd feel.
Feel free to risk your money to give them better options. (It doesn't cost much to set up a light manufacturing plant and Walmart will buy from anyone.) Of course, if you're wrong about the economics, but then, you wouldn't possibly be wrong when it's someone else's nickel....
> As I understand it, one common source of cheap labor comes from > forcing open agricultural commodity markets in developing countries > and then flooding the local markets with cheaper imports.
Yup, evil Nike imports cheap food.
> This > destroys the local agricultural markets and turns people who were > doing okay farming into lots of unskilled labor which can be hired > cheaply.
That can't be true after the food imports fall below the level required by the population. When the local sweatshop pays more than raising food, they show up. When it doesn't, they go back to whatever. Clever devils - they don't stay with inferior options.
> Whatever the benefits of global trade, I think food and > agricultural productive capacity are important enough to allow each > country to protect and stabilize their local agricultural economies, > something the rich industrialized nations have never really stopped > doing.
If this sentiment had ever done poor people any good, that would be one thing. However, since the policies that have resulted from this sentiment have generally been a horror, I think that it's repugnant.
No, the consequences haven't been as fatal in rich countries, but "we hose our people this way" has never gotten much credit with me, especially if the results are worse for the person being sold out. Your mileage may vary.
> Now you're getting into the issue of to what extent are people free to > do > something, or not do that. Earning that money may satisfy a need other than > survival, a need that we may not even understand. Just because you can use > the fact that someone desires something to persuade them to serve your > purposes, does not mean that you are not exploiting them - you may know > that if they held out, you would pay them more, for instance, and that you > are > exploiting their desparation, so that they will not question what you have > to > offer.
If "you'd take less" proves exploitation, the vast majority of agreements are exploitive by BOTH parties and almost all are exploitive by at least one party.
Of course, "exploitation" is really intended as an emotional appeal. For some reason, these people prefer what we'd call sweatshops to THEIR alternatives. That isn't exploitation, even if you won't work without an Aeron chair. Exploitation is destroying their options for your benefit.
Moreover, if you're right about the numbers, you can easily solve the problem, drive out evil, and get the resources to do even more good. Yet....
ana...@earthlink.net (Andy Freeman) writes: > > Lastly, why should they, or anyone for that matter, be > > satisfied with subsistence labor?
> They don't have to be satisfied. They merely deserve to make the > best choice from among the options they have, and reducing their > options doesn't help them, no matter how much better you'd feel.
Who determines what choices they have? How did those become the choices?
Don't feel obligated to post your answer, just consider the question. You can continue this on another newsgroup, alt.cyberpunk is a good one for such discussion (beleive it or not), but I'm done posting to this thread on c.l.l.
-- Craig Brozefsky <cr...@red-bean.com> http://www.red-bean.com/~craig "Indifference is the dead weight of history." -- Antonio Gramsci
> Just because you can use the fact that someone desires something to > persuade them to serve your purposes, does not mean that you are not > exploiting them [...]
I am not addressing the issue of exploitation, but of use of force. People who buy lottery tickets are exploited for the sheer stupidity in their thrill-seeking. People who are affected by advertising to buy something they do not need are similarly exploited. People who _smoke_ are exploited. People who hold a religious belief and do the bidding of their religious leaders are exploited. If I were interested in fighting exploitation, I would _not_ start with a sweatshop somewhere abroad.
> The fact is that one can always produce objections that people are not > free to not do something.
So? This silly "fact" has no bearing on anything. Anyone can always produce any number of arguments for and objections against absolutely anything, but we take that for granted, a given. The interesting thing about arguments and objections is their validity.
> Therefore you will have to take a stand and accept some fairly arbitrary > criteria. Not everyone will make the same choice.
I am used to this kind of anti-logic in political campaigns. Are we having a political campaign with emotional agitation, or do we have a discussion among reasonably intelligent people who are able and willing to think? If you want to continue the political campaign, please let me know, such as by insisting that the validity of arguments is completely irrelevant because it is an arbitrary choice and an argument is only measured by how many people are affected by it.
* Erik Naggum
> Not really. This is all about why some people "prefer" C++. :)
In case it did not come across successfully, this was intended as a joke.
* Marcin Tustin
> I have a friend who ridicules the idea of using Lisp "Because it's an > AI/Neural net/blah blah language" while Pascal (Or rather delphi) is > clearly fantastic - not that he offers any reason. [Etc.]
You will have to take a stand and accept some fairly arbitrary criteria for what constitutes a "reason". Not everyone will make the same choice. Do you have a problem with this line of argument in programming languages?
> > The fact is that one can always produce objections that people are not > > free to not do something.
> The interesting thing > about arguments and objections is their validity.
I assumed that the word "valid" was a given. I am talking here about arguments referring to people being products of/affected by environments and circumstances that they do not control.
> > Therefore you will have to take a stand and accept some fairly arbitrary > > criteria. Not everyone will make the same choice.
> I am used to this kind of anti-logic in political campaigns. Are we > having a political campaign with emotional agitation, or do we have a > discussion among reasonably intelligent people who are able and willing > to think? If you want to continue the political campaign, please let me > know, such as by insisting that the validity of arguments is completely > irrelevant because it is an arbitrary choice and an argument is only > measured by how many people are affected by it.
Getting a little hot under the collar? I am not arguing, but rather commenting on the argument. I reiterate that any position rests on certain axioms simply taken as givens. The axioms of your discourse may not be the same as someone else's.
> * Erik Naggum > > Not really. This is all about why some people "prefer" C++. :)
> In case it did not come across successfully, this was intended as a joke.
> * Marcin Tustin > > I have a friend who ridicules the idea of using Lisp "Because it's an > > AI/Neural net/blah blah language" while Pascal (Or rather delphi) is > > clearly fantastic - not that he offers any reason. [Etc.][ad nauseam -
MT]
> Do you have a problem with this line of argument in programming
>> I'm sympathetic to this, but it goes a little too close to caveat emptor >> in a market where most purchasers totally unqualified and lacking in >> confidence.
>Anything other than "caveat emptor" breeds an audience of idiots.
>Free markets work not at all if the consumer relies on the vendor to be >the one with all the brains.
Free markets don't work in general (there are few if any unregulated markets) because one party (usually the seller) has access to far more information than the other, and acquiring equivalent information is either infeasible (trade secrets) or worth more than the cost of the transaction (most mass-market items including software and hardware). You can say "just don't do the transaction" then, but if a manufacturer's business plan requires (for sufficient volume) that the vast majority of its customers be uninformed, then the alternative to regulation would seem to be _per se_ fraud.
Even back in 1900, tests for chalk in milk were easy to perform, but that doesn't mean pure food laws were a bad idea....
> > As I understand it, one common source of cheap labor comes from > > forcing open agricultural commodity markets in developing countries > > and then flooding the local markets with cheaper imports.
> Yup, evil Nike imports cheap food.
Nope - evil EU exports food for less than they produced it, indeed for less than anyone not massively subsidised could produce it.
> > This > > destroys the local agricultural markets and turns people who were > > doing okay farming into lots of unskilled labor which can be hired > > cheaply.
> That can't be true after the food imports fall below the level required > by the population. When the local sweatshop pays more than raising > food, they show up. When it doesn't, they go back to whatever. Clever > devils - they don't stay with inferior options.
The other option being inferior because we (by which I mean the EU; I don't know if NAFTA nations follow similar policies) destroyed it.
> > Whatever the benefits of global trade, I think food and > > agricultural productive capacity are important enough to allow each > > country to protect and stabilize their local agricultural economies, > > something the rich industrialized nations have never really stopped > > doing.
> If this sentiment had ever done poor people any good, that would be > one thing. However, since the policies that have resulted from this > sentiment have generally been a horror, I think that it's repugnant.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers incapable of producing food efficiently, dependant on a manipulated market, yet still inexplicably poor - welcome to Europe. The contrast is that many third world countries can produce agricultural goods more efficiently than the west, and more efficiently than anything else, allowing them to keep the profits for themselves, develop, etc.
> Nope. Andy rarely posts about the GPL, and didn't post that. > (Andy occasionally points out that the beast of Redmond implemented > Stallman's dream,
> >> I'm sympathetic to this, but it goes a little too close to caveat emptor > >> in a market where most purchasers totally unqualified and lacking in > >> confidence.
> >Anything other than "caveat emptor" breeds an audience of idiots.
> >Free markets work not at all if the consumer relies on the vendor to be > >the one with all the brains.
> Free markets don't work in general (there are few if any unregulated > markets)
Agreed, though there's sure to be some quibbling about what those regulated markets need to be. [My understanding is that it's mostly things for which demand is relatively inelastic (like health care, fuel oil, and so on) that really require this. I don't see software as being part of that space.]
> because one party (usually the seller) has access to far > more information than the other,
I don't agree that the reason for necessary regulation typically relates to this. I think it's common to regulate on this basis, but we can quibble again on whether such regulation is necessary. I'd say it's generally a political division here.
I think there's a fundamental, qualitative (not just quantitative) difference between "You have a disease and I know how to cure you and you'll die if you don't pay me a million dollars". and "I have a device here which I claim will perform a certain function, but you'll have to test it yourself".
> and acquiring equivalent > information is either infeasible (trade secrets) or worth more than > the cost of the transaction (most mass-market items including > software and hardware). You can say "just don't do the transaction" > then, but if a manufacturer's business plan requires (for sufficient > volume) that the vast majority of its customers be uninformed, then > the alternative to regulation would seem to be _per se_ fraud.
I would have thought the Internet would be quickly flooded with hucksters who did a lot of the second, and surely there are some, but I have been surprised to see that "advertising dollars" are more of a trust mark than I'd have expected. Speaking approximately, now, I think no one who invests millions in promoting themselves is going to be selling vaporware because they are going to waste that ad investment on making a bad name for themselves. Trust marks are VERY hard to create, and people do not throw them away lightly. So in fact the market does not tend toward fraud as a basic element of business unless, perhaps, it also utterly controls the media so that consumers cannot share information with one another. I don't see lack of info sharing being the problem on the web.
> Even back in 1900, tests for chalk in milk were easy to perform, but that > doesn't mean pure food laws were a bad idea....
Nothing wrong with testing and labeling. But no reason it has to be done by governments. Thing that are of no value will be naturally removed by the market unless the person can't afford otherwise. And then it didn't have no value.
You're stuck at sea with no fresh water. You come upon a small island with a river. You have no matches to boil the water. You (a) drink it anyway, figuring it's better than sea water or (b) continue to drink sea water waiting for a government health inspector to tell you that the river water is safe?
I feel bad for people who have to live on the margin. But there are many people in the world for whom the choice isn't "good food" or nothing, it's "food of any kind" or nothing. You see them picking through the dumpsters for half-eaten burgers all the time. How can getting day-old bread from a bakery, even if the bakery doesn't have the ability to test it or offer a warranty, be worse? Why should I have to throw it in the trash in order to (pardon the pun) "legally launder" it for them to eat?
Software is the same thing. A lot of people want tools at cheap prices. Enough that they'll routinely steal it. THey don't get a warranty that way anyway--if they expose how they got it, they're in trouble.. Why is it worse to allow someone to sell it with a partial warranty at a price they can afford, making them non-criminals and offering money to someone who can maybe give them what they want at a price they can afford? Whether they can actually keep the customer base happy is something markets can sort out. Maybe people will go back to stealing. If they do, the person offering the low-priced item will go out of business. If not, then why should the low-price/low-warranty item be disallowed?
> Well, it sure works wonder to be dissatisfied with the only better choice > you have.
* Craig Brozefsky
> Oh that's right, there is no alternative. [Misdirected rant elided.]
Next time, please try to read what I write. You somehow managed not even to see the word "better" up there. Omitting that word changes the meaning of the sentence to the nonsense you responded to. Shame on you for being so obsessed with your own opinions and your weltanschauung that you have no time nor desire to read and understand those of others before your knee-jerk reactions set in.
I should have known better than to respond to you. You have argued so strongly for an insight-free way of seeing things that the hope of getting across to you that there are people out here who do not hold the standard opposite view of yours is rather slim. There is just no point in reiterating the same old arguments that have failed to work on you clueless leftist rebels before, so for the sake of argument, assume that I have already realized what your opinions and deeply racist view of white people are based on and do _not_ present you with a smorgasbord of well-known and mostly invalid arguments that you can dismiss out of sheer routine. It would help the _discussion_ if you also assumed that I had read the whole thread and your "deliberations", as well.
You have completely failed to understand what a number of people have tried to commmunicate to you and instead respond as if you had a regexp argument matcher, caring about neither false positive nor false negative matches in the Perl fashion of using regexps. Like some people who have "trigger words" for the groups they believe are their opponnents and pidgeon-hole them upon using such words, you seem to have latched onto a set of arguments that respond not to a single thing anyone have said, but instead to some caricature of a standardized opponent, much like you talk about "the same people" both cultivating in the past and now exploiting those poor, helpless retarded people that could never in their lifetime have done anything to improve their miserable life under "imperialism" until Craig Brozefsky came along to explain everything to them.
It is downright insulting to those who have tried to reach you despite the silly regurgitated "imperialist" and "exploitation" agitation that function so well as "trigger words" for pidgeon-holing you as a "leftist rebel without a clue". I am quite sure you had a brain when you accepted all those emotive "arguments", so if you work a little on it, it might yet work to receive arguments once again, perhaps even non-emotive ones now that you have grown a little older. You see, it looks like you have none at all when you fail to grasp that you are no longer succeeding with all that standard far-leftist rhetoric. I can talk to such phrase-book parroting robots locally any time I want to waste my time, but here on comp.lang.lisp, I expect more. _Especially_ more intelligence at work.
The rest of your article is similarly misdirected.
#:Erik -- Global warming is caused by too many humans not keeping their cool.
> I assumed that the word "valid" was a given. I am talking here about > arguments referring to people being products of/affected by environments > and circumstances that they do not control.
I take it for granted that people have the ability to take control over such things. Still, I am open to your counter-evidence.
> Getting a little hot under the collar?
Apparently, you do not take "valid" _that_ much as a given, but it _is_ sort of nice to see that you are actually out of control relative to your environment and circumstances.
> The axioms of your discourse may not be the same as someone else's.
You realize, of course, that this is no more valid than the previous nonsensical "argument" was.
As I said, I am used to that kind of anti-logic in political campaigns. You seem to favor that over a discussion, and I must assume that that is a result of your environment and circumstances outside your control, so _you_ cannot change your attitude, either. "You realize that humans are not omnipotent and therefore that any argument may contain the seed of its own undoing?" and the cruft you produced are about equally smart things to say. To the layman with no clue whatsoever, they sound sort of profound, but anyone who has read even the littlest bit of philosophy knows that spouting such drivel is the very antithesis of an argument. We all know and understand these things, so saying them betrays the idea that the one who repeats them thinks it has relevance in and by itself. It has none whatsoever. It also betrays the idea tht he who repeats them thinks that doing so has an effect on the discussion. It has none other than to show that he who argues thusly is a fool.
Has it occurred to you that the axiom of different axioms for everybody may not be shared by everybody, such that your ability to take part in a discussion is limited to repeating your axiom to those who do not share it?
<response on the group since I think there is a need to make my apology public>
> * Erik Naggum > > Well, it sure works wonder to be dissatisfied with the only better choice > > you have.
> * Craig Brozefsky > > Oh that's right, there is no alternative. [Misdirected rant elided.]
> Next time, please try to read what I write. You somehow managed not even > to see the word "better" up there.
I did see the word better. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that I read your comment as sarcastic, as if "it sure works wonder" was being said with eyes rolling. It was not quite a regexp firing. It was rather more like my frustration at being unable to articulate my response to your comment sufficiently was given excuse to let loose in a rant by some imagined sarcasm. You're right that it was a unconstructive reaction, and after re-reading it I find myself largely in agreement. I owe you an apology.
Sorry.
> The rest of your article is similarly misdirected.
I think that I failed to sufficiently illustrate why I thought the historical context is useful. It's not because I think that it will give me, or anyone who masters its vocabulary a position of authority. We certainly don't need yet another vanguard party of lefties telling us what to do, particularly when they are guided by a need to preserve an ideology or figurehead, or to protect the own existence (as organizations, not the constituencies they claim to represent).
My original comment about the question of globalization of production being good for countries suggested that in many cases the forces of global financing erase the benefits to the populations thru things like massive public debt, capital flight, and forced migration to towns and cities. In other words, the things that the country offers the company to locate an operation of some sort within it outweigh the benefits. The people who decide what to offer, and who often are the biggest benefiaries, are not the ones who pay the tab.
Obviously, this is not always the case, but for sub-saharan Africa, many parts of Latin Ameria, and now Eastern Europe it has normalized to this. The U.S. and other nations are also not immune, these policies works domestically as well as internationally, with large parts of their population in poverty. My conclusion is based on my own experience an that of my family and friends. I dare to generalize it after looking at quality of life figures, life-expectancy, income disparity figures, infection rates for controllable diseases, weight of public debt in relation to GDP, value of local currency, environmental damages, control of public debt, trade deficits, and loss of control of various aspects of their governments to non-democratic foreign control, and listening to people from various countries around the world.
When in response to your question about force, I suggested that we consider the historical context of the decisions we are making as laborers, it is not because I want to prove that anyone is worse off. Rather it was to expand the question from force being just immediate physical threat, to the forces that created the situation in which being a prostitute, garment worker, or miner is the only option against starvation that is readily available. I think that there are people forced into these situation by the removal any ther optional they feel is realizatic. The goal is not to remove that only option, the simplist anti-sweatshop solution, but to create more posibilities.
If we, as people in these situations (some more dire than others), are going to attempt to create better choices for ourselves, we have to know how we got where we are now, so that we can act now.
-- Craig Brozefsky <cr...@red-bean.com> http://www.red-bean.com/~craig "Indifference is the dead weight of history." -- Antonio Gramsci
> >Free markets work not at all if the consumer relies on the vendor to be > >the one with all the brains.
> Free markets don't work in general (there are few if any unregulated markets)
The popularity of market regulation does not imply that regulation is beneficial, just that it is politically successful.
> because one party (usually the seller) has access to far more information than > the other, and acquiring equivalent information is either infeasible (trade > secrets) or worth more than the cost of the transaction (most mass-market > items including software and hardware). You can say "just don't do the > transaction" then, but if a manufacturer's business plan requires (for > sufficient volume) that the vast majority of its customers be uninformed, > then the alternative to regulation would seem to be _per se_ fraud.
Not at all. Consumers who care can insist on whatever safeguards they feel appropriate; suppliers who don't go along will have to do without those customers. (Kosher food labelling is an existence proof.) Note that the cost of these measures is unlikely to be higher than the costs imposed by govt regulation, so .... (KMP has discussed how mandatory universal regulation doesn't help the people who need it the most.)
BTW - I am confused how the manufacturer's biz plan is supposed to drive my knowledge or my preferences. I've seen a number of biz plans that "required" my participation, yet those folks failed because I (and almost all of the rest of their target market) didn't behave as "required". Am I doing something wrong? Do I owe them something?
>> >> I'm sympathetic to this, but it goes a little too close to caveat emptor >> >> in a market where most purchasers totally unqualified and lacking in >> >> confidence.
>> >Anything other than "caveat emptor" breeds an audience of idiots.
>> >Free markets work not at all if the consumer relies on the vendor to be >> >the one with all the brains.
>> Free markets don't work in general (there are few if any unregulated >> markets)
>Agreed, though there's sure to be some quibbling about what those regulated >markets need to be. [My understanding is that it's mostly things for which >demand is relatively inelastic (like health care, fuel oil, and so on) >that really require this. I don't see software as being part of that space.]
>> because one party (usually the seller) has access to far >> more information than the other,
>I don't agree that the reason for necessary regulation typically relates to >this. I think it's common to regulate on this basis, but we can quibble >again on whether such regulation is necessary. I'd say it's generally a >political division here.
>I think there's a fundamental, qualitative (not just quantitative) >difference between "You have a disease and I know how to cure you and >you'll die if you don't pay me a million dollars". and "I have a >device here which I claim will perform a certain function, but you'll >have to test it yourself".
... Ah, yes, but that's not really what we've got in the software industry. It's "I have a device here which I claim will perform a certain function, but you'll have to test it yourself, and you have to buy it to test it, and oh, by the way, i bought the competing company last week,"
>> Even back in 1900, tests for chalk in milk were easy to perform, but that >> doesn't mean pure food laws were a bad idea....
>Nothing wrong with testing and labeling. But no reason it has to be done >by governments. Thing that are of no value will be naturally removed by >the market unless the person can't afford otherwise. And then it didn't >have no value.
That's assuming minor details like no barriers to entry for competition, and no barriers to market exit for the consumer. Oh, and no inducements for "independent" reviewers to slant their reports depending on who's buying ad space this year...
>You're stuck at sea with no fresh water. You come upon a small island >with a river. You have no matches to boil the water. You (a) drink >it anyway, figuring it's better than sea water or (b) continue to drink >sea water waiting for a government health inspector to tell you that the >river water is safe?
Someone else is on the island already, and says, "you can drink from the river, but my outhouse empties into it just below this spring I've roped off. So really, you'd better just promise to work for me in return for a ready supply of water that I promise I've boiled." It all depends on which analog you're willing to use.
>I feel bad for people who have to live on the margin. But there are >many people in the world for whom the choice isn't "good food" or >nothing, it's "food of any kind" or nothing. You see them picking >through the dumpsters for half-eaten burgers all the time. How can >getting day-old bread from a bakery, even if the bakery doesn't have >the ability to test it or offer a warranty, be worse? Why should I have >to throw it in the trash in order to (pardon the pun) "legally launder" it >for them to eat?
Oddly enough, bakeries do offer day-old bread. But once again, it's a question of analogy -- if the bakery mixed floor sweepings in with the old bread, and offered it up front rather than in the dumpster, you might be pretty annoyed with them for pretending to feed people when they're actually just trying to reduce their carting bill..
>Software is the same thing. A lot of people want tools at cheap prices. >Enough that they'll routinely steal it. THey don't get a warranty that way >anyway--if they expose how they got it, they're in trouble.. Why is it worse >to allow someone to sell it with a partial warranty at a price they can >afford, making them non-criminals and offering money to someone who can maybe >give them what they want at a price they can afford? Whether they can >actually keep the customer base happy is something markets can sort out. >Maybe people will go back to stealing. If they do, the person offering the >low-priced item will go out of business. If not, then why should the >low-price/low-warranty item be disallowed?
I'm not saying that the low-price low-warranty item should be disallowed, _as long as that's very explicitly what it is_. What we have now in the software biz is a large quantity of high-price low-warranty products, which look like high-warranty products until your sunk costs are high enough to discourage tossing them and going for replacement. And (Gresham's Law) those products, having higher margins and hence more money available for influencing purchasing decisions at all levels, tend to drive out not only high-priced, high-warranty items but also low-price, low-warranty ones.
p...@panix.com (Paul Wallich) writes: > >I think there's a fundamental, qualitative (not just quantitative) > >difference between "You have a disease and I know how to cure you and > >you'll die if you don't pay me a million dollars". and "I have a > >device here which I claim will perform a certain function, but you'll > >have to test it yourself". > ... > Ah, yes, but that's not really what we've got in the software industry. > It's "I have a device here which I claim will perform a certain function,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Not at CREATION time of the device we do not. We might have that at time of a sale in a commercial environment, but if so, that *is* a warranty.
> but you'll have to test it yourself, and you have to buy it to test it, and > oh, by the way, i bought the competing company last week,"
This is NOT a statement about free markets and ought not be mixed in here. This is a statement about finite universes and companies that have gotten so big that they threaten to own the entire space. In an infinitely large space, where you know you can't possibly suppress all the competition, you are not motivated to try. In a space where competition can come in many forms, you must arm yourself against things, not try to suppress the competition. This is an upper-bound effect that occurs when the market is finite and it has specific solutions special to it, but is not about "free markets". I'm not even going to discuss this further if it degrades to an I-hate-Microsoft fest. I have as much reason to dislike Microsoft as anyone, but the fact is that Microsoft's big problem is just that it is (a) "too big" ["trivially" fixed by a population or court with the will to do so] and (b) has allegedly done other illegal things ["trivially" fixed by punishing it appropriately using existing laws already on the books].
> >> Even back in 1900, tests for chalk in milk were easy to perform, but that > >> doesn't mean pure food laws were a bad idea....
> >Nothing wrong with testing and labeling. But no reason it has to be done > >by governments. Thing that are of no value will be naturally removed by > >the market unless the person can't afford otherwise. And then it didn't > >have no value.
> That's assuming minor details like no barriers to entry for competition, and > no barriers to market exit for the consumer.
Cease and desist. This is already illegal.
> Oh, and no inducements for "independent" reviewers to slant their > reports depending on who's buying ad space this year...
> >You're stuck at sea with no fresh water. You come upon a small island > >with a river. You have no matches to boil the water. You (a) drink > >it anyway, figuring it's better than sea water or (b) continue to drink > >sea water waiting for a government health inspector to tell you that the > >river water is safe?
> Someone else is on the island already, and says, "you can drink from the > river, but my outhouse empties into it just below this spring I've roped > off. So really, you'd better just promise to work for me in return for a > ready supply of water that I promise I've boiled." It all depends on which > analog you're willing to use.
He has no compulsion to sell me the water in any case. And present law gives me a defense if I storm his house and take the water by force in order to survive after he makes such a statement, I believe. If not a defense, at least a mitigating circumstance. In any case, this is nto responsive to the scenario I cited, which does occur. Once again it is singlemindedly addressing a problem of improper single-individual control of finite resources, which is not the property of a free market. Any free market must reset when one person owns the market, or it is no longer free. As a consequence, it must have controls on people buying too much of the market.
> >I feel bad for people who have to live on the margin. But there are > >many people in the world for whom the choice isn't "good food" or > >nothing, it's "food of any kind" or nothing. You see them picking > >through the dumpsters for half-eaten burgers all the time. How can > >getting day-old bread from a bakery, even if the bakery doesn't have > >the ability to test it or offer a warranty, be worse? Why should I have > >to throw it in the trash in order to (pardon the pun) "legally launder" it > >for them to eat?
> Oddly enough, bakeries do offer day-old bread. But once again, it's > a question of analogy -- if the bakery mixed floor sweepings in with > the old bread, and offered it up front rather than in the dumpster, > you might be pretty annoyed with them for pretending to feed people > when they're actually just trying to reduce their carting bill..
Depends on whether someone offered me better at a better price.
> >Software is the same thing. A lot of people want tools at cheap prices. > >Enough that they'll routinely steal it. THey don't get a warranty that way > >anyway--if they expose how they got it, they're in trouble.. Why is it worse > >to allow someone to sell it with a partial warranty at a price they can > >afford, making them non-criminals and offering money to someone who can maybe > >give them what they want at a price they can afford? Whether they can > >actually keep the customer base happy is something markets can sort out. > >Maybe people will go back to stealing. If they do, the person offering the > >low-priced item will go out of business. If not, then why should the > >low-price/low-warranty item be disallowed?
> I'm not saying that the low-price low-warranty item should be disallowed, > _as long as that's very explicitly what it is_. What we have now in the > software biz is a large quantity of high-price low-warranty products, which > look like high-warranty products until your sunk costs are high enough to > discourage tossing them and going for replacement. And (Gresham's Law) > those products, having higher margins and hence more money available for > influencing purchasing decisions at all levels, tend to drive out not only > high-priced, high-warranty items but also low-price, low-warranty ones.
It *is* explicitly what it is. When there is no warranty, there is no warranty. Can you see how neatly isomorphic that is? When you say there is a warranty but there is not, you end up creating the odd situation that if you say a little warranty, you don't know if you have done so additively to the warranty that was there with the null warranty or not. If ad money can influence purchase decisions even over a warranty, the warranty was not, by definition, important. The existence of the "pet rock" is not just a victory of people with advertising dollars over people with good sense about what pets need to be, it is an observation about what the core value of a pet is.
In article <8bbd9ac3.0107071826.72018...@posting.google.com>,
Andy Freeman <ana...@earthlink.net> wrote: >> As I understand it, one common source of cheap labor comes from >> forcing open agricultural commodity markets in developing countries >> and then flooding the local markets with cheaper imports.
>Yup, evil Nike imports cheap food.
One common practice is for a multinational agricultural company to acquire the local farmland and produce export crops, which eliminates the possibility that the locals can go back to subsistence farming if they don't like the sweatshops. This acquisition is not normally done in true free-market style. Note that undeveloped societies usually can't support a government of a large country in the Western sense, and so the governments that do exist tend to be corrupt. If one isn't, by chance, it can always be removed on some pretext or another.
Bringing subsidized products into a country for purposes of destroying the native production ability is called "dumping", and is normally criticized. When it's done to countries we care about, anyway.
>> This >> destroys the local agricultural markets and turns people who were >> doing okay farming into lots of unskilled labor which can be hired >> cheaply.
>That can't be true after the food imports fall below the level required >by the population. When the local sweatshop pays more than raising >food, they show up. When it doesn't, they go back to whatever. Clever >devils - they don't stay with inferior options.
The usual practice is to remove much of the land from subsistence farming, perhaps changing over to export crops. Once this is done, the population is at corporate mercy (or what the corporations use instead).
>> Whatever the benefits of global trade, I think food and >> agricultural productive capacity are important enough to allow each >> country to protect and stabilize their local agricultural economies, >> something the rich industrialized nations have never really stopped >> doing.
>If this sentiment had ever done poor people any good, that would be >one thing. However, since the policies that have resulted from this >sentiment have generally been a horror, I think that it's repugnant.
Why? Where has this sentiment been put into policy? The horror stories of economic development come from the destruction of the local economy, in general. Once the local economy is destroyed, the corporate exploiters can get people for near-starvation compensation and dispose of them when convenient.
I'm open to horror stories about third-world countries that have kept their economies and food production intact, but I am going to verify them.
>No, the consequences haven't been as fatal in rich countries, but "we >hose our people this way" has never gotten much credit with me, especially >if the results are worse for the person being sold out. Your mileage >may vary.
I don't quite understand it. In a desperate attempt to stay vaguely on-topic, could you repeat that in Common Lisp?
> * Marcin Tustin > > I assumed that the word "valid" was a given. I am talking here about > > arguments referring to people being products of/affected by environments > > and circumstances that they do not control.
> I take it for granted that people have the ability to take control over > such things. Still, I am open to your counter-evidence.
> > Getting a little hot under the collar?
> Apparently, you do not take "valid" _that_ much as a given, but it _is_ > sort of nice to see that you are actually out of control relative to your > environment and circumstances.
> > The axioms of your discourse may not be the same as someone else's.
> You realize, of course, that this is no more valid than the previous > nonsensical "argument" was.
So you are saying that all people proceed from the same axioms?
[snip random rant]
> Has it occurred to you that the axiom of different axioms for everybody > may not be shared by everybody, such that your ability to take part in a > discussion is limited to repeating your axiom to those who do not share
it?
As I said, my comment was about your discussion, not a part of your discussion - indeed, it can only be a (useful) part of a discussion about discussion and discourse, and related subjects.
> >> Whatever the benefits of global trade, I think food and > >> agricultural productive capacity are important enough to allow each > >> country to protect and stabilize their local agricultural economies, > >> something the rich industrialized nations have never really stopped > >> doing.
> >If this sentiment had ever done poor people any good, that would be > >one thing. However, since the policies that have resulted from this > >sentiment have generally been a horror, I think that it's repugnant.
> Why? Where has this sentiment been put into policy? The horror > stories of economic development come from the destruction of the > local economy, in general.
And one of the "best" excuses for destroying the local economy has been that sentiment. "We're going to save you" has had roughly the same effect as "we're going to enslave you", except that it gets all the right people to sign on and praise the camp building.
Of course, those people weren't doing it right. Or, "their culture just lends itself to excesses". Or "how were we to know that the thugs would take over". And so on.
> I'm open to horror stories about third-world countries that have > kept their economies and food production intact, but I am going > to verify them.
You're confusing intent with result. That sentiment is used to promise one thing, but it delivers something else; it doesn't deliver intact economies or food production.
> I don't quite understand it. In a desperate attempt to stay vaguely > on-topic, could you repeat that in Common Lisp? >> (+ 1 2) 3 >> ; something's wrong, I wanted 5 >> (+ 1 2) 3 >> ; Okay, I'll try something different >> (+ 2 1) 3 >> ; Okay, I was right the first time >> (+ 1 2) 3 >> ; okay, I need to break things down more >> (+ 1 (+ 1 1)) 3 >> ; let's try it again >> (+ 1 (+ 1 1)) 3 >> ; okay, now I see the problem >> (+ 1 2) (+ 1 2) (+ 1 2)
In article <sfw4rso7bm5....@world.std.com>, Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> wrote:
>I don't know. "Using an OS correctly" is remarkably hard to define. >I'm willing to be a little forgiving on this point. I'd get out of the >OS market if someone was going to hold me to a warranty like that. >I *don't* mind the government making certain modifying terms that they >regulate. Saying I market a "grade A safe" operating system, for example, >where maybe the government monitors various grades of safety. >But that shouldn't keep me from selling an "operating system", unqualified, >to whomever might buy it and not care.
I can think of one consumer product right now that can have catastrophic failures under normal use: the automobile. These things kill tens of thousands of people each year in the US, and yet companies turn them out by the millions and make a profit doing so.
If we as a society can make this possible, we can surely come up with a way of warranting operating systems that doesn't scare away all the good systems guys.
The government does have grounds for regulating stuff that can cause physical injury or death if it fails, and enforcing assorted restrictions on what a vendor can say about a product, and what a purchaser is allowed to assume given what the vendor says. The latter is very useful to allow consumers to make some kind of informed decision. I can't think of government regulations that prevent me from buying whatever junk I want for my own use. There are market effects that will, since it's sometimes not worthwhile to make junk just to sell it cheap.
(I have a friend who has a stamp for a mini-contract on the back of his checks, saying that by accepting the check the vendor is warranting that the product will have a certain mean time between failures, and he has returned software successfully when it failed too often. I don't know what would happen if this became common practice, rather than one guy who it's cheaper to cooperate with than risk litigation.)
thorn...@visi.com (David Thornley) writes: > I can think of one consumer product right now that can have catastrophic > failures under normal use: the automobile. These things kill tens > of thousands of people each year in the US, and yet companies turn > them out by the millions and make a profit doing so.
> If we as a society can make this possible, we can surely come up with > a way of warranting operating systems that doesn't scare away all > the good systems guys.
> The government does have grounds for regulating stuff that can cause > physical injury or death if it fails,
But software is more like "metal" than like "cars". It might be used for something life-threatening or for something innocuous. Regulating all uses of metal (e.g., so you had to have a license to put tin foil around leftover food) is what I fear whenever anyone talks about implied warranties. Sometimes covered leftover food goes bad, but people don't have a cause of action against the tin foil companies.
> and enforcing assorted > restrictions on what a vendor can say about a product, and what > a purchaser is allowed to assume given what the vendor says.
There is a political division here. Can you not see it? Some of us think it's the job of government to protect us from all evils. Some of us think it's not even the job of government to know what we care about and what we don't. Some of us want the government to tell us what to worry about. I want the consumer to tell us. If the consumer does not care, why should government. To quote (well, paraphrase--wish I had the exact quote) Jesse Ventura--`Government should do for people only what they cannot do for themselves.'
> The latter is very useful to allow consumers to make some kind > of informed decision.
IF the consumer wants to pay for it. And otherwise NOT. If the restrictions are not something I need or want to know, then the government regulation merely raises the price needlessly.
> I can't think of government regulations that > prevent me from buying whatever junk I want for my own use.
YES, ABSOLUTELY YOU CAN. People do decline to get involved in giving out free stuff or selling low-cost stuff because of worry of the liability issues. Just the other day, I had a conversation with a friend about selling her birds (finches) at a yard sale. We concluded she couldn't sell them for fear of warranty issues, and that she'd just have to give them away, or, in the spirit of the free software movement, make up the money by increasing the cost of the cage. (sigh) They're finches. What kind of idiot would buy them thinking I could warranty they'd live another day? God can't do that. Yet I had to concede it was a reasonable concern just because laws are stupid on this issue of warranty.
> There are market effects that will, since it's sometimes not worthwhile > to make junk just to sell it cheap.
It's stupider than that. You can't give away things that might be syntactically confused with toys for small kids any more without worrying about liability. Suddenly it's not up to the parent, as it once was, to keep the kid from bad things. Now it's up to each and every producer of any kind of small plastic thing to see it's labeled "not for kids". I wonder why we bother with such labeling, since in the US we no loner educate the dumbed-down public to read, anyway.
And there was a certain Darwinian value in having kids that like to eat marbles and choke on them get genetically screened out. At some point that lack of screening is going to come home to haunt us too.
> (I have a friend who has a stamp for a mini-contract on the back of > his checks, saying that by accepting the check the vendor is warranting > that the product will have a certain mean time between failures, and > he has returned software successfully when it failed too often. I > don't know what would happen if this became common practice, rather > than one guy who it's cheaper to cooperate with than risk litigation.)
Yeah, vendors do that kind of nonsense too--with switching phone services by offering checks that have that stupidity on the back. I think a good lawyer could probably beat those stupid back-of-check contracts, though I'm sure no one is motivated to try. Proves nothing.
A proper contract is one that involves a meeting of the minds, not a snuck in bit of wording. People in the US these days often want to have the convenience of having the government decide everything for them, not realizing the resulting financial cost. If they saw the cost itemized, they might think twice.
- - - - -
To bring this back at least a little to the computer forum, if not to the lisp forum, contracts will one day probably work electronically. It will be VERY BAD if the thing we have to code up is not a nice simple additive list of agreements starting from zero and adding constraints each for a price, but instead starts with a set of defaults agreements that have to be laboriously and unreliably whittled away to get back to an acceptable base from which business can be done. Monotonicity has its place, and government is not an exercise in that. I'd hate to have to reliably program that contract system, and no doubt I'll end up having not only to do it but to have it covered by some implied warranty. Ugh.
