"We saved some money" is how economics works in price competitive markets. This is a result of many players doing what keeps each one competitive, but without collaborating on what the large scale effects are down the road.
An excellent and accurate elaboration of the modern economic theory that led us, nevertheless, to our current precarious position.
These are all anti-consumer and bad public policy.
In a pedantic sense, major US cruise ships don't need to touch a foreign port in their journey. The catch being there is only one major US cruise ship - The Pride of America, which generally does Hawaiian cruises: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_of_America
The other major cruise ships you see operating in the US are actually foreign-flagged so they can avoid US environmental, gambling and employment regulations, etc. These are the ships that must touch a foreign port during their journeys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920
That's why there's basically no ocean shipping from American ports to American ports.
And even if only consumers matter, what you're saying only hold in theory, given a 'perfect market'. In practice, consumers have imperfect (read: atrociously bad) information, and big corporations hold many unfair advantages.
I absolutely never said consumers are the only thing that matter. I don't know where you read that between my lines. I said that in a market that is propped up by subsidies, the consumer is the one that gets hurt the most.
That's not the right question to ask. The right question to ask is 'Who is this bad for?'
The Jones act, for instance, is good for US shipworkers, and for enforcement of US shipping laws, but moderately bad for Hawai'i, and really, really bad for Puerto Rico.
Who do you care more about? Preserving the comfort of the continental American middle class employed in maritime transportation, or a bunch of people in Puerto Rico? The answer to that question determines how you see the Jones act.
There's plenty of approximately unchecked sectors of the economy. Eg software or computer hardware.
There's plenty of companies in these sectors.
Alas, the Jones Act isn't actually good for US shipworkers in general. The Jones Act makes it so that there are nearly no US shipworkers in the first place.
(However, the few US shipworkers that do exist are to a certain extent protected by the Jones act.)
Russia has a tiny and impoverished economy.
China is still rather poor. (And only started to grow richer when they reformed in the direction of economic freedom starting in 1978-ish.)
And "direction" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your statement about China. They were, and still are, very protectionist of their internal market, using official and unofficial means.
Not to imply western countries are exempt - they also made (and make) use of protectionism in growing their industries. Only after industries matured, would the market be opened, and economic propaganda launched how unrestricted trade was the only way to prosperity (and, by pure chance, this would give the now globally-competitive industries new export markets). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism#In_the_United_St...:
Alexander Hamilton, the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, was of the view, as articulated most famously in his "Report on Manufactures", that developing an industrialized economy was impossible without protectionism because import duties are necessary to shelter domestic "infant industries" until they could achieve economies of scale. The industrial takeoff of the United States occurred under protectionist policies 1816–1848 and under moderate protectionism 1846–1861, and continued under strict protectionist policies 1861–1945.
In other words, protectionism has a proven track record of developing economies, while unrestricted free trade is only theoretically able to accomplish this. Of course economists are immune to empirical proof - from that same wikipedia article:
There is a broad consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare, while free trade and the reduction of trade barriers has a positive effect on economic growth.
Yes, western countries have often shot themselves in the foot with protectionism. They aren't perfect.
On the news a while ago, the news was going on about how the UK is banning dual use goods, so this tells us some Govt dept has audited potentially every business and its goods and compiled a list of devices which can be considered multi use. You see this alot with chemicals, Glycerine, used as a cosmetic can also be used for bombmaking. I only found this out when I purchased a litre and then some internet forum started going on about how it can be used for bomb making.
Its why we dont get taught everything, not even in the news. Anyway oil prices have gone up which will push more people towards electric vehicles, and yet Russia has the largest oil reserves in the world, so no doubt they will benefit, because if another internet forum is to be believed, the Saudia's have all but exhausted their oil reserves which is one of the reasons for them IPO'ing their national oil producer.
Kind of explains why I also wasnt allowed an export licence for an app but also highlights who was behind it!
It's the chief component in dynamite.
>Kind of explains why I also wasnt allowed an export licence for an app but also highlights who was behind it!
When do you need an export license for an app?
Dont have the source code anymore or anything and its not ever going to happen now.
When I say it was uncrackable, it was based loosely on code books which were used in ww2, which is something I subsequently read about later on in the news.
No, you didn't.
> When I say it was uncrackable, it was based loosely on code books which were used in ww2, which is something I subsequently read about later on in the news.
Could you please elaborate? Code books only work when both parties have a copy. Obviously for an app, you need to assume that the attackers have access to the app.
Lets just say it not only resource burned me because this wasnt just a simple string of data encrypted with an encryption algo, but it would have resource burned anyone else who decided to have a go at decrypting it because of some of the methods I employed. I set out to defeat any automated brute force cracking with Amazon cloud/Bluffdale level of resource at their disposal. This could also apply to quantum computing, because in a way there are probably enough computing devices connected to the net to emulate a quantum computer in near realtime.
I turned their weakness into my advantage, but you would have had to have thought out of the box.
I cant go into any more details, its as simple as that, so you can say what you like, but I'm not here to convince you, but I will say current internationally recognised encryption methods are just lazy imo.
Edit. The difference with the resource burn though is I would get paid anyone else would be needing more tax dollars, so over time it could have been possible to see who was spooking on the reports because of their actions.
Alas, frankly, you sound like a crank.
It's exceptionally easy for a person to devise an encryption system they can't crack. It's exceptionally hard to devise an encryption system others can't crack.
That's why generally cryptosystems are only seen as trustworthy when they have been out in the open and been attacked---without success---by many smart people with a track record of breaking cryptosystems.
Eg do you know how differential cryptanalysis works? Or linear cryptanalysis?
Or assuming you know about RSA, would you be able to figure out which classes of keys are deemed weak without looking it up? (Ie can you repeat this attack?)
Do you know which existing cryptographic systems are vulnerable to quantum computers? And which are not? And why?
It's also a great optimization criteria to use to position yourself for checkmate.
Monopolies, countries...
Anti-price gouging regulation makes it harder for companies to benefit from disaster preparedness.
What we didn’t do enough is take the geopolitical landscape into this equation (or a potential pandemic, for that matter), which I hope changes after recent developments.
I blame the governments mostly for this, I completely understand the businesses needing to do what’s best for business.
People have far too simplistic models of how things work, this is the consequence of a lack of understanding and shortsightedness
At least it does not seem to involve any conventional use of the word business.
> Business are still run by people. Nobody was forced to see someone else doing something shitty and then say "well I just need to be a bigger asshole than that guy! Must be okay 'cause it's not illegal"
I think that would be a good start
The blame here lies solely on society and the politicians it elects. There is no other solution where individual business owners can be expected to take on societal problems.
As an example: Bangladesh has been on a multi-decade long streak of excellent economic growth. Mostly thanks to the textile industry. Regular people are better off.
> In last decade, poverty dropped by around one third with significant improvement in human development index, literacy, life expectancy and per capita food consumption. With economy growing close to 6% per year, more than 15 million people have moved out of poverty since 1992.[64]
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Bangladesh#Modern_B...
Some argue that industrialization under these conditions is not good for the countries and people being exploited for their labor
Life is better in Bangladesh now than it used to be. By a lot.
There are many communities whose opinions and perspectives we just seem to ignore and we trust the "western" institutions who make publications on such matters
I'm not talking about how "wealthy" a community is in terms of material gains or technological improvements.
Communities see changes in their fundamental way of life due to industrialization which impacts their relationships with each other and their natural environments which, on average, seem to be worse than what they were doing before.
All of this industrialization comes from people wanting more profit, and we see working conditions and level of pay that would be unacceptable in the US but people write it off as being "okay" because "they're a developing nation" or "its a third world country" when the real reason is greed and a desire to skirt local regulations.
Though it wouldn't call it a wealth transfer. It's wealth creation in both Bangladesh and their customers and investors.
How do you blame government for businesses running around with planning models that miss wars and pandemics, the two most common causes of ruin and disruption for the entire duration of human history?
Businesses/corps come and go ... the Nation of $nation only tends to do so on the next timescale up. When their actually looking out for systemic blindspots no one else is, and not pandering to the elite.
Personally I think the solution is for governments to have a contingency plan, and opposed to forcing any individual business to do anything, but if we did want businesses to change their behavior, it's definitely a government issue.
Unless somehow "buy my product , it's more expensive because our business hedges against war and pandemics" works in advertising (eco-friendly seems to get some traction, so maybe?)
Governments often assume (wrongly) that businesses have incentives to handle long-term risks, since they want to exist for a long time and remain profitable. The reality though is most are more focused on their share price and dividend than handling strategic risks.
do physicists assume frictionless surfaces and perfectly elastic collisions? yes when they're explaining the basics of Newton's Laws, but they also develop theories and models for friction, etc.
Same with economists, they study economies and do their best to come up with complete models. Are they perfect? no. Do they know more about economies than anybody else? yes.
What makes you think economics makes that assumption? The economics literature is full of papers investigating various kinds of market imperfections. (Mostly because all the papers involving perfect markets have already been written. It's publish or perish in academia after all.)