[TheForge] Re: Taiwanese Machine Tools - and some Yak

[Andrew Vida]

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 06:49:29 -0400, kevin donahoe <flyinpig@go- 
concepts.com> wrote:

> Rant to follow (BG)
>
> Perhaps we should implement a Bureau of Approval of Trade Fairness.

	Another gov agency.  We need that about as much as we need
	another strip mall.

> The new
> BATF would assure good intent is  blended with the profit motive,
> implementing protectionist practices to protect us from greedy 
> competition
> of those little brown people. With the correct measures of tariffs and
> protections and antidumping acts we'll be safely isolated and have a 
> higher
> standard of living because the unions will run the show and we can pay 5x
> the going rate of everything :)  Social engineering through the war on
> drugs, terror and bad trade with a people that will be doomed to work in
> rice paddys assure our choices aren't base on our own needs, but the 
> needs
> of the greater good!

	I trust this is all sarcasm.  Sometimes I can't tell.
>
> Personally I think that Rockefeller and Standard Oil did way more to save
> the whales than Greenpiece will ever approach.  Read recently that behind
> Mexico, work is exported England, Germany and Isreal  for machine work.  
> BUT
> they have higher hourly wages?!

	Question is WHY.  It has to be something to do with capabilities
	and/or trust.  If there is nobody in MX that is able to reliably
	manufacture part X to 0.0001" tolerances, then either you farm
	it out to people that can, produce a shitty part, or go into a
	new line of business.

	The only thing in the current scenario that will save the USA
	will be to bring the rest of the world up to our rates (or very
	close to them) for labor, cost of living, etc.  That, or bring
	all the manufacturing back to our shores, which may be unlikely
	today, but not impossible.


> Could it be the same regulatory/tax maze
> that causes the same drugs to be sold for more here than across the 
> border?
> Most likely that's part of it.

	Agreed.  These issues have become highly complicated by the many
	factors that color them.  Economics, legislation, politics... it
	weaves a very confusing web that makes it very difficult to divine
	effects of a given element.  In fact, I doubt single causal factors
	can resonably explain much of anything.  Effects appear to be
	the results of the confluence of many factors.  This renders analysis
	difficult, at best.
>
> We have more to fear from the good intentions than greed, in many cases.

	to an extent I strongly agree with this, but beyond a point greed
	is every bit as dangerous.  Dead is dead, and it doesn't matter
	how you got that way.  Remember when everyone was cowing about the
	spectre of nuclear annihilation; as if lights out via gamma flash
	would be worse than being stabbed in the heart with a kitchen knife.
	In fact, one might argue that the former would be preferable, give
	the speed of action.

> Greed is a magnification of self interest which is much more transparent
> than somebody wanting to choose what's best for me.

	Nothing wrong with greed, per se.  I am a greedy person.  My greed
	for life causes me to take my next breath.  I don't HAVE to take it,
	but I readily choose to because I still find living sufficiently
	interesting to want to continue doing so.  But when your greed
	threatens to destroy me, a problem has arisen, like it or not.  If
	unbounded greed for quarterly dividends causes a condition by which
	my life mightbe literally threatened, I'm may become comfortable 	saying 
that someone has crossed a line that ought not have been.
	There's sufficient gray to make such determinations difficult more
	often than they are easy.  There are many points of view.  The pure
	libertarian POV might say that those at the top have the clear right
	to run their businesses as they see fit.  I might even agree with
	that POV.  But no matter how much I have in fact do so, I cannnot
	reasonably deny that there may be other POVs that are in vehement
	opposition.  The practical reality of this is that if those at the
	top of the food chain set into place conditions that push others
	into a sufficiently tight and unpleasant corner, those conditions
	could precipitate some very unpleasant events.

	Look at the French revolution.  The aristocrats had it made.  All
	they had to do (and it was very much within their power to do so)
	was see to it that the common man had a decent life.  One can
	argue all day long about their right to rule by virtue of this
	fact or that, but such will make a precious scant dent in the
	opinions of those whose stomachs have been empty for weeks or
	years.  I have found humans to be remarkably passive when the
	basic needs are seen to.  Getting a large mass to move in concert
	takes some rather powerful motivation, especially when the motivation
	is for doing unpleasant things.  To get a few thousand people
	to rise up and actively seek out and kill their rulers and then
	to behead them en masse requires a whole hell of a lot of
	driving force, and I believe generations of anguish and suffering
	provided precisely that.

	If this nation devolves into a third rate backwater republic
	(albeit a very large one), one can never know what actions
	will precipitate from such conditions.  I don't know what the
	answers are to such problems beyond some fundamental and perhaps
	simplistic suggestions that have perhaps less than zero chance
	of serious consideration.  But I do see the potential for some
	very unfortunate turns if we keep giving it all away and becomming
	dependent upon others for our most basic life accoutrements.
	Would you feel comfortable relying on China to provide you with
	most or all your edible raw materials?  I sure as hell would not.
	Things change.  Friends become enemies, and even if it lasts only
	for twenty years, that's a big chunk out of a human life.
>

	I make no moral judgements here.  I hope you did not take my post
	as such.  But actions have consequences.  Most are insignificant,
	but some are very significant, right or wrong.  If the people
	who are controlling large sections of our economy cause conditions
	to arise that make life sufficiently miserable for enough people,
	right or wrong, the consequences for everyone could be ugly.


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