Re: [PLUG] Free Software

[zuzu <sean.zuzu@gmail.com>]

On 10/26/07, Matthew Rosewarne <mrosewarne@inoutbox.com> wrote:
>
> The US still is an agricultural powerhouse, but in large part due to our
> government subsidies and trade agreements.

I would argue *solely* due to government subsidies and trade
restrictions, because people romanticize the farm life.

> There's no real reason why the US
> and the poorer countries couldn't _both_ perform mass-manufacturing at a
> profit, as its worked that way quite well before.

I think the primary real reason is that agriculture (and even
manufacturing) naturally provides such relatively small profit that
the high standard of living generally accustomed in the USA cannot be
provided for.

>  The problem is our rush to
> ditch industry in the US, since it's not seen as profitable enough.

profit, divorced from economic distortions of government interference,
implies people successfully getting the greatest value / return on
investment / growth of wealth.

> The
> folly of that approach is the massive damage it will do to our own ability to
> compete at all, let alone satisfy jumpy analysts.

to quote, "what's with all this 'we' shit"?  what damage, to whom?  if
"we" want to buy something, somewhere someone else wants to sell it to
"us".

> Take Toyota, for example:
> They slowly and steadily moved industry into the US, and are now making
> windfall profits.  If more people in this country understood what Toyota did,
> this whole mess would never have started in the first place.

Toyota merely adapted to a PR crisis because of all that jingoist "buy
American" garbage sentiment.  masses of people were foolish enough to
buy shitty overpriced cars solely because they were manufactured by
"Americans".

(aside: I hate how Toyota cars have become bloated "fat American" cars
between the late-80s and now.)

> > the real question isn't "how do we make lots of stuff?" but rather
> > "what the hell should we even make?"  real wealth growth in a healthy
> > capitalist world economy derives from research and development (R&D,
> > aka creativity / innovation).
>
> I didn't say we don't need development, just that we _do_ need to have an
> industrial backbone to support that brain.  Innovation and production isn't
> an either/or, as we've been very good at doing them both for most of the 20th
> century.

"we" includes everybody in the world.  I don't understand why you want
to limit it to a subset of humans in a particular geographical locale.
 furthermore, you don't have the epistemology necessary to determine
where the "ideal" distribution of such a geography would be.
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