VIEW Home
MAIL Home
BOOK Reviews
©
This week:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Top
CHAOS MANOR MAIL
A SELECTION
November 29 - December 5 1999
REFRESH/RELOAD EARLY AND OFTEN!
CLICK ON THE BLIMP TO SEND MAIL TO ME
The current page will always have the name currentmail.html and may be bookmarked. For previous weeks, go to the MAIL HOME PAGE.
Fair warning: some of those previous weeks can take a minute plus to download. After Mail 10, though, they're tamed down a bit.
IF YOU SEND MAIL it may be published; if you want it private SAY SO AT THE TOP of the mail. I try to respect confidences, but there is only me, and this is Chaos Manor. If you want a mail address other than the one from which you sent the mail to appear, PUT THAT AT THE END OF THE LETTER as a signature.
PLEASE DO NOT USE DEEP INDENTATION INCLUDING LAYERS OF BLOCK QUOTES IN MAIL. TABS in mail will also do deep indentations. Use with care or not at all.
I try to answer mail, but mostly I can't get to all of it. I read it all, although not always the instant it comes in. I do have books to write too... I am reminded of H. P. Lovecraft who slowly starved to death while answering fan mail.
If you want to send mail that will be published, you don't have to use the formatting instructions you will find when you click here but it will make my life simpler, and your chances of being published better..
This week:
Monday -- Tuesday -- Wednesday
-- Thursday -- Friday -- Saturday
-- Sunday
HIGHLIGHTS:
- AT&;T Minimum Charge (We don't care. We don't have to.)
- Office 2000 Registration
- Highbinders?
- More phone company alternatives
- Fixing my Word/HTML problem
- More AT&;T Horror Stories: are you slammed and scammed?
- The end of the AT&;T story
- Is AT&;T entitled to a medal? Heroes or highbinders?
- How to set your default browser.
- The solution to the gun problem. America's schools in good hands.
- Microsoft and innovation
- Open GL and Microsoft
- Active X vs Java
- Talin on the WTO riots
- The free trade Debate.
- China and space
- More on Free Trade
- Office 2000 revisited
- Defeat in our future?
- THE CASE FOR FREE TRADE: an economic answer.
©
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Top
Monday November 29, 1999
In View last night I had a complaint about AT&;T charging a minimum for not using my phone. I have a bunch of mail on this. I'll post a couple.
Look into dropping AT&;T and not adding a new default carrier. You can dial 1010XXX if you want to make a long distance call. I like 1010811. I'm saving money every month here with this approach.
Robert Giriswold
Jerry,
I had a similar problem. Call your phone company and tell them that you want to "PIC to no carrier." This gives you no long distance carrier, or minimum charge. To dial long distance, if necessary, dial 10 10 whatever. We use 10 10 811.
Regards,
Harold Hackman
Good advice. I'll do it, particularly for that phone. My normal phone I don't mind paying for the convenience of just dialing the number (often electronically) but that phone is never used to call out on at all. I am really upset over this, since the phone is registered as a "senior citizen phone" on a special rate that is predicated on not making many calls. It belonged to my mother before she died. I'm eligible for that rate at my age. I kept it as a sort of emergency backup to call in on if all else failed, and we never call out on it except once to call 911. So AT&;T quietly sneaks in a fee for not using their service. I am really furious about this. If they ever told me they were doing it, it was on some slip of paper in the bill among advertisements for junk no one wants and sweepstakes no one wins.
And since AT&;T has royally irritated me, I'll change all my other lines to a different long distance carrier. Those highbinders. But I can't disconnect from their "service" because they won't answer the phone. They say all their representatives are busy taking orders for new services, so they haven't time to discuss my bill.
My next call is to the Public Utilities Commission.
Don't bother trying to call AT&;T. You don't need to, and when you finally raise a human being you'll only be subjected to an endless marketing script in the hopes of talking you out of cancelling.
Call you local phone company to switch the 'emergency' phone to 'no default ld carrier.' Call the alternate long distance companies of your choice to order new service to replace AT&;T on other phones. THEY will order the change with you local phone company, and the bad news will eventually filter down to AT&;T.....
Cheers!
MJ
I suppose, but I am angry enough that I want to TELL THEM WHY I welcome slammers or anyone else who can get me away from The Phone Company. They don't care. They don't have to...
Dear Dr Pournelle, About the Office 2000 registration. I believe it is some sort of test that Microsoft is running in a number of countries. I read about it in a British computer magazine called PC-PRO (if I remember rightly). The countries they are running the test in are Australia (an English-speaking country, although any Englishman will tel you otherwise:-)), Brazil (third world) the Netherlands (Europe), and some others maybe. This information all according to said publication. What they like to see is how much they can get away with before customers run out on them in droves. Copies of Office 2000 from the MSDN kit do not have this "protection", so maybe you got one of those. Or maybe they do not want to alienate their "local" customers. The practice of limiting a product to say 25 to 50 runs before you must register is getting more common: all OCR (Omnipage etc.) packages that I know of have this scheme built in. And most versions of AutoCAD. Back to Office: you have to register each package using its own serial number. Just consider that you have to manage 100 desktop computers and have to register them all individually. And shudder. Think about it. Not being able to reinstall the software you paid for if you change a motherboard or a network card (they use the BIOS GUID or Ethernet adress as an unique ID), or "proving"to Microsoft that you are only re-installing the stuff, scouts honor, judge, or do a network "push" install using one set of software... Oh well.
Pieter van de Beek (beek@hitt.nl)
The obvious thing to do is Just Say No if they want you to do all that. I doubt they will even try here in the US. Microsoft has done well enough: why are they playing these games? I understand of course that in the Orient there is no such thing as respect for intellectual property, and you sell one copy and that's it. Something has to be done, but this isn't it. What is I don't know.
highbinder, n [the Highbinders, gang of vagabonds in New York City about 1806] 1: a professional killer operating in the Chinese quarter of an American city 2: a corrupt or scheming politician
I presume you mean the latter. Still doesn't seem to fit the context to me; am I missing something? --PSRC
Paul S R Chisholm <psrchisholm@yahoo.com>
No comment. I endeavor to use words that won't get me sued...
From: Stephen M. St. Onge saintonge@hotmail.com
Subject: Too much time on my hands
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
Obviously that's my problem now. I saw your rant about The Phone Company (I presume your knowing that phrase means you liked The President's Analyst too), and thought "Highbinders? Vas is los?" Starting at http://www.reverse-lookup.com/dictiona.htm I found the following: from http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0475815.html
1. a swindler; confidence man; cheat. 2. a dishonest political official or leader. 3. a member of a secret Chinese band or society employed in U.S. cities in blackmail, assassination, etc. 4. a ruffian or rowdy.
and http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?db=web1913&;term=highbinder
high·bind·er n.
A corrupt politician.
A member of a Chinese-American secret society of paid assassins and blackmailers.
[After the Highbinders, a group of ruffians in New York City c. 1806.]
Swindler, confidence man, blackmailer -- yeah, sounds like AT&;T.
Other web sites worth noting:
http://www.freespeech.org/forthright/ihlstart.htm##h has a lot of obscure words.
And if you want a few synonyms for death that Monty Python missed in the dead parrot sketch, see:
http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/ROGET.sh?word=highbinder
Best, St. Onge
P. S. Thanks for recommending Once a Hero by Elizabeth Moon. Your taste in books is extraordinarily good -- it's almost exactly like mine!
I recently went through the process of sifting through long distance providers.
First, you don't need to contact AT&;T to switch away from them. You contact the new long distance company and you may need to contact your local baby bell. I has to take the latter step, but only because I'd put a PIC freeze on my account when I was slammed by AT&;T 3 years ago.
Second, I ended up with QWEST, www.qwest.com They were the only carrier that had a rate under 10 cents/minute that didn't incur a monthly service charge. Their deal starts at 9 cents/minute and declines 1/2 every 3 months until it gets to 5 cents/minute. The only catch is that to avoid the monthly fee, you have to agree to let them bill a credit card. I had no objection to that, since with a credit card I've got plenty of rights to deal with any disagreements that may arise. The only surprise I got was a $2/month/line line subscriber fee that had previously been buried in my local telephone bill.
Good luck,
Scott Kitterman kitterma@erols.com
P.S. In the interests of full disclosure, I own a small amount of QWEST stock, but that's not why I signed up for their service.
Hi Jerry,
These meta tags were in your "webstuff.html"
<meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document> <meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 9"> <meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 9">
These tags tell FP what to open. If you have Word installed (you do) Word will open it. Solution: replace these meta tags with ones from a page created in FP.
You also have XML behavors
xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
These are referenced in the style lower down:
<style> v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} </style>
Regards,
Will Bierman wbierman@flash.net
Alas, trying to delete a bunch of that stuff gets me where the document won't open at all. I'll get there yet...
Hi Jerry,
AT&;T does not care. Which struck me dumbfounded. I was watching CNBC this morning and they were talking about AT&;T and how they are undervalued and how their stock price was rocketing skyward. Unbelievable, as they treat customers like dirt.
I should know... I have ISDN from PacBell and I was horrified to learn that AT&;T was charging a monthly long distance fee every couple of months on EACH of my 2 ISDN numbers. This was only showing up every so often so it went overlooked for 2 years! I was so mad I could not see straight.
I called PacBell and inquired about this and was told they (PacBell) could do nothing about it. I could not believe it. I told them that the only number called with the 2 lines was a local number. There was never any Long Distance calls made. I told them to check their records. They did and then they offered to connect me to AT&;T. I inquired why PacBell had no control over this. I was told that they (PacBell) were required by law to add a long distance carrier when any phone line is installed. The default carrier is AT&;T.
The PacBell rep put me directly through to an AT&;T rep which after I stopped screaming, offered a refund on my next PacBell bill. I did get my money back.
The question is, how many consumers are getting fleeced and have no idea this practice is going on? This horrible situation only gets better... AT&;T now owns most of the Cable companies including my local cable company. I couldn't get my satelite dish up fast enough!
A "pox" on AT&;T. At least Microsoft is not sneaky like AT&;T.
Regards,
Will Bierman wbierman@flash.net
The weird part was that I supported the notion that AT&;T be the default carrier, and I left ALL my phone lines on AT&;T thinking those highbinders would not do these things. Live and learn.
OK, late enough at night I was able to get an AT&;T service representative, who was embarrassed. They have closed the account on that line, and they will refund the money. Some of that charge is Al Gore's mandated charge. It falls heaviest on elderly people who need a telephone, don't use it much, and don't read the fine print on their bills. Suddenly a million of them are hit with $20 bills. A few bucks from an old man here, a few from an old lady there, and pretty soon AT&;T can be proud of its profits.
Well, we are off, they are paying the money back -- the fact that they will pay it back so quickly is pretty indicative of the fact that they know better than to do this, but they're hoping many won't ask for it back. But AT&;T is not responsible for Al Gore's "access tax" which falls on everyone, but falls heaviest on people with small incomes. The obvious answer is for ALL the senior people in this country to drop all long distance access and use 10-10-811 when they really need to make a long distance call.
AT&;T, for shame. Al Gore, for shame.
Jerry,
I believe that this was a "feature" of the beta Office 2000 that was dropped in the final version, with exceptions. I believe that if you purchase the Academic Edition, and possibly some other specialty editions, you are required to register it before it reaches 50 uses, or it will lock up. I got my copy direct from MS, and never had to register it. I've installed it at least 5 times. I registered it the first time I installed it, but that's it, and I use it regularly.
Maybe one of your contacts at Microsoft can verify this.
Hope this helps,
Dave Hampson Webmaster -- TowerDave2000 http://www.towerdave.com webmaster@towerdave.com
Your experience is mine, but apparently there were some test runs in various places, Australia being the main one. I think the test was a failure...
©
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Top
Tuesday, November 30, 1999
The file prefs.js is not in the Registry.
One easy way to turn the default browser check dialog back on is to open InterNet Explorer, get to the InterNet Options panels (in IE5: Tools, InterNet Options..., Programs tab). Check the box for "InterNet Explorer should check to see whether it is the default browser". Close IE5, open NetScape &; the dialog box will appear.
John jruff@excite.com
Aha. Thanks!
> Does anyone know how to make Front Page 2000 believe a WORD Document in html which is incorporated into a web is in fact something I can edit in Front Page?
I was puzzled by this too. By default Front Page tries to edit files with the same program that created them. To get around this behavior open your web with Front Page, right click on the offending file in the Folder List, and select 'Open With'. You should be given a choice of Word and Front Page. Pick the latter.
Here's how to avoid having to do this every time. Select the html tab, look for a meta tag that says something like <meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 9">, and delete it. When you return to normal view, the file will be listed with the Front Page icon instead of the Word icon. Next time you double click on it, it will open for editing in Front Page.
Cheers, German
I should have known that. Thanks.
Hi Jerry -
Some weeks back you'd run a letter or had a comment on a yearbook photo a Minnesota School Board ruled "unacceptable" because it showed a picture of a student with a gun. In this particular case the student had enlisted in the Army and the gun in question was a 155mm howitzer...
I thought you'd like to see the results of the "negotiation" - here's the article (the link to the actual article is http://www.wcco.com/news/stories/news-19991124-183418.html
School To Publish Compromise Yearbook Photo Pictured Cannon Will Be Draped With Flag NEVIS, Minn., Posted 12:34 p.m. CST November 24, 1999 -- A high school yearbook can include a photograph of a senior perched on a cannon because a new version shows a U.S. flag draped over the barrel.
A compromise reached late last week ends a monthlong battle over Samantha Jones' photo, which Nevis High School administrators banned because it violated their "zero-tolerance" weapons policy.
More than 100 students walked out of class Nov. 3 to protest the ban. Roughly 50 students were suspended for two days.
The new picture, also taken outside the Akeley Veterans of Foreign Wars post in west-central Minnesota, shows Jones sitting atop a 155 mm howitzer cannon with a flag covering the barrel. Jones enlisted in the Army earlier this year.
"It's basically the same picture -- she's still wearing her Army shirt and sitting on the (cannon)," said Sue Jones, Samantha's mother. "My daughter got what she wanted. I'm glad it's over."
School officials agreed to publish the new picture when the "gun" disappeared. School policy prohibits images of guns, knives or other weapons on shirts, hats or in pictures.
"We've said from the very start, 'Show us something that doesn't look like a gun and we're OK,'" Superintendent Dick Magaard said.
"We were never concerned that anyone would bring a gun like that to school. It wasn't a matter of patriotism, it was a matter of image."
<***> Do you ever get the feeling the school officials in this country are a little beyond stupid? "Show us something that doesn't look like a gun and we're OK"? I guess this is the lawyer-infested world in which we live - it's not the actual content, but the appearance, which is critical. Never mind the fact that this high-school student is willing to put herself between these unintelligent individuals and harm's way, they're more concerned about the appearance. I guess it's not the product of the schools we should be worried about - it's the PRODUCERS.
-<[+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+]>- Sometimes creative inertia is preferable to purposeful confusion. http://www.goldengate.net/~jdominik/index.html
When the entire nation gets to be like those school officials, who will they find who will defend them? Precisely who wants to put a life on the line for such people? But of course there are no tigers in this world. All is sweetness and light and if we just don't have anything that looks like a gun we will all be safe. And I am Marie of Rumania.
The appropriate distinction to be made here is between "invention" and "innovation". Microsoft rarely invents things. Microsoft does, however, "innovate" because it brings new things at an affordable price to those who can use them. The Macintosh GUI, for example, was cool but expensive; Windows made it less cool but far more affordable. And examples can be multiplied ad lib.
The people who refuse to admit that Microsoft innovates are the same people who insist that the fact that some unknown and unknowable consumers were harmed because of a theoretical prospect that somebody somewhere might possibly have built and marketed an operating system that might possibly have competed with Microsoft's, and that said notional operating system might possibly have cost less than Windows. (The latest egregious example of this non-sense can be found in today's Washington Post editorials.) We lawyers call that sort of thing "speculation" and in the Good Old Days it wasn't admissible in court -- although, judging by the "Findings of Fact" (what an oxymoron!) in the current antitrust case, standards have changed markedly.
Timoid of Angle
When I taught Constitutional Law and Introduction to the Common Law I certainly had a different view than what seems prevalent now. But then John Adams thought the lawyers a sort of aristocracy in the best sense...
For more on the innovation issue see below.
I may be wrong in but I think AT&;T is acting HEROIC in passing on the Universal access fees on to it's customers marked as such. Congress mandated this charge last year and was very upset when it was put on the bills as a separate fee. They intended, by not making it usage based, to have it passed on as a hidden charge. When AT&;T refused to go along the FCC tried to make them toe the line but was ignored. All carriers charge for Universal Access they just are not as up front about it.
Thomas A. Weaver taweaver@thegrid.net
Good point. Of course AT&;T has always been more than one organization all mashed together. But my complaint was about the "minimum" charge which got snuck in on Senior lines. It's not a lot -- the twenty bucks I got socked with turns out to be 3 months worth, so it's more like $80 a year than the $240 I had thought they were doing, and of that $20 there is more of the Al Gore grab than goes to AT&;T (except that the Baby Bell and then AT&;T get the cash flow benefits). So I suppose my anger was a little misplaced.
But then there is this:
Sir,
Recently I had a battle with AT&;T myself. After using them for my whole life, I had to switch. I had ordered a new service from them, which would include replacing my calling card. To make an extremely long story short, after 2.5 months of having no overseas capability on the calling card (important to me), 6-8 phone calls, 8 emails, they told me, for the fifth time, "We can send you a card in ten days."
So, I cancelled, ordered from someone else, and guess what...they called, begging to have me back. Offered me money, but no calling card. Denigrated my new company, offered me a better deal. Funny, I had asked what deals were available before, and this particular one wasn't mentioned.
I wonder about their practices given the huge choices available now. I manage my own investments. In doing research, I had considered AT&;T as a purchase, as they allow direct investing through them at no brokerage fee (a common practice). They also seemed a good investment. However, given my recent experiences, I declined to put my money with them in any form. I follow the rule of invest in what you know/use.
Bottom line? AT&;T lost the edge they used to have. They used to be competitively priced and had the best customer service. Now, they are increasingly mediocre on pricing, and worse on customer service.
Bryan Broyles ex-AT&;T customer of 35+ years
But also this:
Dear Dr. Pournelle
I have followed the latest discussion re:ATT with some interest. I am biased on this issue however. I spent six months in the northern Saudi Arabian desert during Desert Storm. We we in a very isolated area and had no phone service. After about two months, small groups of us were trucked to a distant site where satellite dishes had been set up by ATT for calls home. It was wonderful to talk to my family and let them know everything was alright. ATT was there in a very hostile, austere environment for us and I guess I'll be a long time fan.
Keep up the good work
/J. Ameika
Dr. Pournelle, Apparently, Office isn't the only program subject to this. Front Page 2000 has the 50 use/ register "feature". One of my customers was lamenting this, though I do believe it was on an "Academic" version. My only thought is how much of a pain this would be rolling it out in a corporate environment. 250 machines, 3 floors of office building, and 250 copies of media to keep track of! I think I'll by a boat and change careers to be a fishing guide.
George Laiacona III <george@eisainc.com> "It is always best to start running away early, before the rush. That way there are fewer bodies to trip over." -Gil the Treacherous "Of course I joined the outlaws. They have the coolest outfits." -Tex
Well, academic isn't corporate, and academics are, I fear, notorious pirates: they want things at a hefty discount, then they give them to their friends. My wife typically sells one copy of her reading program per school (and I don't mean a site license). I fear I can't get too upset with Microsoft or anyone else trying to get academia to conform to even minimal ethical rules. And yes, I know there are honest academics, but most say "It's for the kids," and cheerfully pirate software. Under my rule of "would they have bought it anyway?" this falls in the middle, I guess.
Returning to the subject of innovation:
Howdy Jerry,
I think what a lot of people are thinking when they are lamenting Microsoft's lack of innovation isn't necessarily the kind of things Jon is talking about. I think they are disappointed in the lack of truly new features w/in Windows. For example, the PC user interface should have advanced way beyond what it is now. We still point, click &; type. The same thing we've been doing for over 10 yrs. OS/2 had built into it voice navigation. It worked quite well on a 166 Pentium. Windows has yet to have anything like it, mostly due to it's inability to handle the overhead. I also think the desktop interface, as it is, is seriously dated. Shouldn't we at least have the option to have a 3 dimensional desktop, that could hold much more info than the current 2D desktop. We have games that do allow you to walk thru hundreds of rooms &; scenarios. Shouldn't the 2d desktop have evolve into a 3D office or workarea?
I think this is the kind of things people are thinking of in terms of innovation.
Another area I've just recently jumped into w/ both feet is USB. Microsoft's support for USB has certainly delayed the switch to USB. NT still doesn't support USB or PNP. Windows 98 does a poor job of supporting USB. I ran out of IRQ's ages ago &; finally had to add a USB hub in order to be able to connect a printer again (other than across the network). What a pain getting that hub installed. I rebooted no less than 6 times before Windows 98 recognized everything. The process was convoluted at best &; virtually impossible at its worst. For something that is supposed to be easy to install, I'd rather deal with SCSI than do this USB setup again.
How long has USB been out? 3 yrs? Look how long Microsoft took to get out an OS that supports it, and not even very well.
Even ActiveX was a clone of other ideas. Microsoft tried it best to highjack Java &; when it couldn't, came up w/ its own "standard" fraught w/ problems, security being the worst. How often do we have to download an ActiveX security fix?
Here's a truly innovative idea... a truly secure Windows OS. Now that would be innovative. ;-)
Greg Lenderink, aka, CyberRanger cybrrngr@frii.com -- CyberRanger - cybrrngr@frii.com - Rangers Lead the Way!______ "The CyberRanger's AO"-http://www.frii.com/~cybrrngr ___/RANGER\___ "Larimer County 4-Wheel Drive Club"-Unit #17 /5th <|__|> Reg\ "The Mountaineers"-http://www.mountaineers4x4.org |7___/ \___t| 1971 Chevy K20, 1970 Jeep CJ-5 |/ \|
©
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Top
Wednesday December 1, 1999
I read with interest Greg Linderlink's comments on what he perceives as Microsoft's lack of innovation, followed by a short list of evils. I feel the need to comment.
Microsoft is not the only company producing GUIs these days. I don't see any explosively "innovative" GUI features from Apple or Sun recently. In fact, I haven't seen any epiphanies in GUI design lately (the closest calls being the various Linux window managers floating around). Maybe that's just my experience, but don't lay it solely on the doorstep in Redmond when there's not much going on across the board.
Not all innovation is useful. To me, the 3-D desktop Greg suggests would just confuse the average home user, not to mention quite a few programming types like myself. The purpose of a UI is to make human-computer interaction easier and more intuitive. I'd say the Win95 UI is an advance over the single-level folder scheme of Win31. Obviously, Microsoft shopped the other GUIs of the time for some features. Maybe that's not "innovation", but MS is in the business of selling useful (and ideally easy-to-use) software, not white papers.
Lest we forget, MS does significant R&;D. Part of that is voice recognition (see http://research.microsoft.com/srg/ ). So you'd expect it to be part of an OS in the near future, especially when there's already a 4.0 API. The MS research site gives a vague roadmap of what we may see in the OSes (and development environments) of the future.
Yes, the Windows USB situation is sad considering the proliferation of devices. <tangent> But what I consider even more disappointing is that we're still limited to 15 IRQs in modern PCs. The architecture needs a serious upgrade. Adding 16 more IRQs (and building new hardware to support it, of course) would solve a ton of device issues. I know it *mostly* works, but we're only going to deal with more hardware conflicts as people start hanging all the neat new toys, er, devices off of their machines. </tangent>
(Regarding ActiveX and Java) First, let's clear this up: ActiveX and Java are apples and oranges. Java is a programming language. ActiveX is a set of integration technologies built on COM whose primary purpose is to imbed controls in web pages (to quote some Microsoft propaganda somewhere). Second, ActiveX's predecessor is OLE. ActiveX is essentially OLE streamlined for the Internet. OLE2.0 (and OLE controls -- the precursor to ActiveX controls) was released in May 1993. This is long before (choose one) 1995 -- when Oak became Java; or 1996 -- when Navigator 2.0 (with Java support) and the JDK were released. So I hardly consider ActiveX a Java clone.
For what it's worth, Kerberos is coming in W2K. And while it's pretty laughable once you look closely, previous NT versions (at least 3.51, and I believe 4.0) were C2-certified. The various Un*xes have their security flaws, too. But 80% of desktop PCs aren't running a Unix variant, so you don't hear about it nearly as much as MS's security holes.
And finally, I let your eyes rest.
Steve DeLassus s.delassus@computer.org
You said earlier that you had a problem with a Word html document opening in FP 2K. If you go under the folders view and right click on the file, choose "open with" and select "FrontPage". After you do it this way, it will open that document in FrontPage instead of Word each time.
Thanks,
Mike Kelley Network/Hardware Technician Webmaster Hutcheson.org Information Services Hutcheson Medical Center email.mkelley@hutcheson.org www.hutcheson.org
That has got to be the simplest fix I ever saw. Works like a charm. And if there is anything in the Front Page documents about it, it is well hidden; I sure tried the help files with every entry I could think of. Thanks!
I find there's a lot like that in Front Page: it works if you can figure out how to do it, but figuring it out is not at all simple.
I got mail about Microsoft dropping support for OPEN GL, and asked Eric Pobirs, onetime Chaos Manor intern and now a BYTE.com contributing editor, what he thought about it. His answer is worth including here:
Seeing as how SGI dropped the ball on this and just about everything else for the last few years, no. It doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft's track record either way. OpenGL is SGI's baby and they've let it drown, then thrown it out with the bathwater. OpenGL is primarily of interest to those concerned with crossplatform development. Apple, for instance, utterly ignored it long after Microsoft began offering support.
So far as innovation goes, the DirectX API's definitely fall into the plus side. They got off to a rocky start but plenty of developers have high praise for the recent generations. What many neglect to consider is that OpenGL is only a small portion of a multimedia development package, it isn't even a full solution for all the tasks required by a 3D game, nevermind all the other elements needed for developing games and other media heavy apps.
Many people suffer from the delusion that DirectX is yet another plot by the Evil Empire. In fact, it was a group of game developers who proposed the idea to Microsoft. They knew it was the only way to avoid rivalries that had ruined every previous shot at a standard. PC gaming has grown at a pace greater than the PC itself because so many of the hassles that defined PC gaming have been overcome. The console side has grown at an even faster pace but that says a lot about the importance of ease of use. If not for DirectX many developers would have abandoned the PC platform entirely.
Also, don't expect all the bits of Fahrenheit to disappear. Much of the functionality is still in the DirectX road map. It just isn't going to talk to OpenGL without a third party wrapper.
Eric Pobirs
Re: ActiveX vs. Java, sparse documentation
Steve DeLassus wrote eloquently, but left out a few pertinent details. OLE/COM/ActiveX was introduced during the height of the IE/Netscape war, when NS was the powerhouse and IE was beginning to grab "market" share (the parentheses are because it's difficult for me to call it a market when you've got two essentially free products competing). MS created ActiveX ostensibly to add features to web pages that wouldn't otherwise be possible. A bit earlier, Sun had introduced Java for the same purpose. The fun part: if you used IE, you would be able to view Java-enhanced pages, but if you used NS, you'd be SOL trying to view ActiveX-enhanced pages. MS was doing a wonderful job of leveraging the existing technology and expertise. Why train new people to write Java when you've already got people who understand OLE?
Of course, the outcome was that most people felt that they didn't want to limit the market for their web pages by requiring IE, so ActiveX has pretty much died outside of intranet applications. Actually, you'll notice that there's not a helluva lot of Java out on the World Wide part of the web, either.
As for documentation, I'm afraid that most programs are so feature-rich that it's nearly impossible to keep track of what they can do, let alone document them decently. I've taken to right-clicking over everything when I get a new app just to see what kind of context menu pops up.
Bill Cavanaugh billcav@yahoo.com
and then this
Steve DeLassus writes: "80% of desktop PCs aren't running a Unix variant, so you don't hear about it nearly as much as MS's security holes."
He may well be right, but there is a very good one-stop weekly Web site that covers Linux security very nicely:
Free of Slashdot noise and wonderfully edited. "Recommended."
And if Linux just doesn't seem secure enough:
http://www.openbsd.org http://www.openbsd.org/security.html#default
--Erich Schwarz
Here opens what I suspect is a new fight...
Subject: WTO Riots
I hadn't paid too much attention to the WTO until I heard about the riots yesterday. What little I knew about the WTO was bad news. I had heard a few news reports about this organization, which seemed to be the paid tool of large corporate interests. In particular, the WTO has been a focal point for intellectual property maximalists who have slowly but inexorably worked to distort our laws so that large content giants such as Disney and Time-Warner gain more and more IP rights, taking those rights from the public.
However, I've now been reading some of the other WTO issues, and the more I read the more uncomfortable I get. Here's an organization which appears (from what I've read so far) to have the power by federal treaty to strike down state and local laws on the grounds that they are "barriers to trade" - including laws designed to protect workers, the environment, and the consumer. I'm not a big fan of burdensome government regulation, but I believe that certain laws (for example, labeling laws) are required so that the public can make informed decisions about their own welfare. Each man may be the best judge of their own self-interest, but that only works if the average man can correctly discern where his self interest lies, which is difficult if the population is being systematically bamboozled.
If this is true, then I'm not surprised that there's rioting in the streets. (Although it appears that the actual violence was started by a very small group of about 20 people, and some have theorized that these are agent provocateurs designed to discredit the protest.) Still, it appears that there are thousands of angry people demonstrating in Seattle.
My hope is that the inscrutable giants of trade will learn what happens when they get together and decide our fate for us.
-- Talin (Talin@ACM.org) "I am life's flame. Respect my name. www.sylvantech.com/~talin My fire is red, my heart is gold. www.hackertourist.com/talin Thy dreams can be...believe in me, If you will let my wings unfold..." -- Heather Alexander
I'll have more to say in VIEW...
Jerry,
You write: "I have yet to have an economist, and I know some Nobel winners, explain to me why free trade is all that great a benefit IF YOU CONSIDER THE EXTERNALITIES."
As I understand the arguments:
1. The issue of which policy makes society most economically efficient is separate from the issue of what society should do to compensate the victims of efficiency. I think Schumpeter some decades ago wrote a paper demonstrating that free trade could be beneficial for the entire society *if* care was taken to have the winners compensate the losers, presumably through progressive taxation, unemployment insurance, and free public education to make the task of learning new trades easier.
2. The basic case for free trade is that if somebody invented a machine that magically turned wheat into high-quality automobiles, we'd consider him a hero. Of course Detroit would suffer, but we'd accept that as the price of such a vast improvement; we might tax the wheat-to-cars inventor somewhat higher than average to help soften the blow to Detroit, but anybody who proposed squelching the invention would be rightfully termed a Luddite. If we then found that the "inventor" was secretly shipping out wheat and shipping back autos to and from Japan, he'd be denounced as a fraud. But, as far as the *internal* economics of the U.S. go, nothing would have changed.
3. Another case for free trade is that it is just about the only way we may have to actually raise the living standards of people outside the present First World. That is a strong argument if you think that rising incomes outside the First World generally make us safer and the world better. Again, this argument depends on there being adequate protection for people in the First World, but that is something that can be considered separately from trade per se.
4. Free trade does indeed economically punish low-skilled workers in the First World. That's a strong argument against free trade *if* you see our current skill distribution as a fact of nature instead of an outcome of educational policies that are themselves extremely sub optimal. I have the latter view and I suspect you may too.
To sum up: I think the case against free trade is actually a case for social welfare in the First World, paid for by the economic winners of free trade; and also a case for fundamental reform and expansion of free public education, again to be paid for by the economic winners of free trade.
To sum up even more: free trade is OK if you tax the winners and intelligently use the money to succor the losers.
Of course one can have a big argument about whether that's feasible. But I will say that a government incompetent to support welfare and education is not necessarily competent to use tariffs in an honest and beneficial way either. Saying that "government is the problem," may be true, but is as good an argument against tariffs as anything.
--Erich Schwarz schwarz@cubsps.bio.columbia.edu
One of the problems I have is that I don't much trust the government to use the money wisely. Frankly, had we not had the money to do Federal Aid to Education, we might well not BE IN this problem of having drastically declining production capabilities.
I don't disagree with your analysis, and indeed I find Schumpeter well worth study. Nor do I disagree with the people who keep insisting that comparative advantage maximizes total economic satisfaction. Of course it does. But the costs are high.
As to growing automobiles, if I could be sure they would also be able to grow tanks, artillery, and military trucks I would feel a lot better about converting Detroit into a slum and paying the people there to shut up and enjoy it.
Half the people in this country are below average. Paying them to get out of the way is not the best idea I ever heard.
Jerry,
You write:
"As to growing automobiles, if I could be sure they would also be able to grow tanks, artillery, and military trucks I would feel a lot better about converting Detroit into a slum and paying the people there to shut up and enjoy it."
I agree with this caveat. Of course, we seem to have done a tolerably good job -- so far -- of keeping our military supplied with good weapons through the early 90s. (Since then I suspect readiness has slipped, but I also suspect that has little to do with free trade and a great deal to do with, er, philosophy of the Executive Branch. Which is another discussion entirely...)
"Half the people in this country are below average. Paying them to get out of the way is not the best idea I ever heard."
I agree. But there is at least one very good discussion of this problem by Earl Hunt: _Will We Be Smart Enough?: A Cognitive Analysis of the Coming Workforce_. It's easily available from Amazon et al. and I recommend it highly.
Hunt goes into careful, rigorous detail about the very problem you're citing: namely, the problem of how we will have a decent (honorably employed) society in the next century, given that present trends very strongly favor the better educated. He refutes both naive arguments that there is no problem at all with IQs (e.g., Stephen Jay Gould) and that there is no use in society for people who aren't in the upper half (e.g., Murray and Herrenstein). He's neither politically correct, nor bigoted, nor sloppy, and it's a great read.
It's also a somewhat depressing read because it got about zero publicity when it came out (1995) except among pointy-heads like me. But perhaps somebody with good standing in the Republican Party could forward the Bush campaign a copy...
Anyway. I agree with your caveats, but am not sure they're deadly. We make the best weapons in the world whenever we don't have a turkey in the White House. We also have intelligent thinkers of good will who at least offer non-trivial ideas about what to do with that lower half besides just warehouse them. What's needed is hope and effort. As always.
--Erich Schwarz
We don't seem much in disagreement, except that I think many manufacturing jobs are precisely the kind of dignified and useful work that people who aren't so high on Spearman's g can do. Intelligence isn't everything, and never has been. Character counts, perseverance counts, taking pains and being careful of detail counts. Smarts are fine but there's more to life.
And I see us busily exporting all the jobs that the lower half of the population can do. There is always a lower half, of course, on any scale you care to use; the trick here is to make those on the bottom useful, and not so resentful of the top that they can be organized into a proletariat. Populares vs Optimates fueled the conversion of Rome from Republic to Empire. I would hate to see it happen here.
Possibly I worry for nothing. Possibly.
©
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Top
Thursday December 2, 1999
Jerry
As a long time occasional reader of your books and site, I am stirred for the first time to write, by the trade issue.
Fifteen years ago New Zealand relied on it's agricultural exports to provide a comfortable standard of living for the entire country and a good living for it's farmers. However, for many years there had been ever increasing subsidies for farmers and associated industries to support an agricultural base that had actually grown less and less viable over the preceding 20 years.
A change was triggered by the election of a nominally left wing government, who discovered after taking office that the debt financed subsidies (amongst other initiatives) had driven the country into near 3rd world debt levels.
In one stroke, farm subsidies (and all the complicated bureaucratic paraphernalia that surrounds any complex government schemes) were abolished. Many farmers lost their farms, some of which had been in their families for generations. However, the good (and the lucky) farmers who had not had high debt loads, and who were farming genuinely productive land, with products that the world was willing to pay premium prices for, have survived, and in some cases prospered.
I do not think that you would find many people in New Zealand, who wish to go back to the bad old days of subsidies, although it is still hard for many farmers.
At this point, I have to declare a bias.. Mike Moore, the current WTO president, is a New Zealander, and was a member of the New Zealand government that removed subsidies and tariffs in New Zealand. He has been there and done it, and while it hurt like hell for a while, it has made us stronger in the long run.
However, while the US and the EU slap quotas and tariffs on us, for being more efficient (and, perhaps for being blessed with a more fertile and temperate climate), as well as subsidising their own farmers, it all seems rather pointless gaining those efficiencies. I have a great deal of sympathy for your proposed 10% flat tariff on all goods coming in your borders (and every other country's borders), but I think it should stop there. I bet if the WTO could get all countries to agree to that, they'd be more than happy.
Alan Meredith alan.meredith@xtra.co.nz
Precisely. Subsidies are a poor idea, although in the case of arsenals and defense critical industries they may be needed. It may also be true that you have to just end them, although farm subsidies have in the US so twisted economic reality that fairness probably demands they be phased out rather than just dropped.
Years ago -- 1959, I think -- I proposed a law providing that there could never be more employees of the Department of Agriculture than there were farmers. It was of course seen as humor, and used in Slate Gorton's speeches once, but no one took it seriously. I was serious, but I couldn't get anyone to believe me. The problem with subsidies is that the subsidized and the bureaucrats involved form an iron triangle demanding access to the Treasury. Subsidies create interest groups.
A straight 10% tariff is at least neutral as to whom it helps and whom it harms, and I think distorts economic reality far less than a subsidy.
It may be that a country that has no jobs of what used to be called "Skilled labor" -- drill-press and lathe operators, hammer mill operators, and the like -- nor has built robots to do the jobs because it is cheaper to allow Chinese slaves to do it and then import the result -- is better off "growing" automobiles, but that is not as evident to me as to everyone else.
RELATED TO THAT:
Subject: HALF THE PEOPLE ARE BELOW AVERAGE
Jerry,
How are you defining 'average' here? On it's face, this is a 'throw away' statement. Of course half of the people are below average.. that comes with the definition of 'average'. There is nothing that you can do to the school system to change this. This is assuming that you are defining average as 'the population of the United States'.
While I don't disagree with your views, the school system today isn't the school system I went through and it's a damned shame, but I'm surprised you'd state them in such vague terms.
John
-- coredump@enteract.com http://www.enteract.com/~coredump I plan to retire on the Information Superhighway
I did not intend to be vague. Samuel Johnson said that men seldom need educating but they often need reminding.
The obvious solution to the "average" problem is to raise the entire level of the average so that what was once "below average" is now "good enough". True enough, there will still be half the people below that new average, but if it's high enough they will also have useful work. That is the theory of public education. Now of course public education is a system for subsidizing parasites in education colleges and education administration buildings: at an average of $8,000 per pupil per year we don't lack for the money to provide a decent education, but as we throw in more money we get fewer results, and continue to refuse to allow people to teach who could. I am for instance not qualified to teach science in high school. I know a number of retired military officers who used to instruct recruits who are not "credentialed" and refuse to go through the Mickey Mouse junk courses that teachers colleges insist everyone must take and only they can give.
Sorry if you found my remarks vague. They were intended to make you think: what do we do with the bottom half in skills? Is there no place in the world for them? And if there is, is there any obligation on the part of the winners -- you and I -- to try to structure a harmonious community? I have been a policeman (briefly) and a city official in charge of police. I have been a soldier. I know how to keep the masses in their place. I don't really want to live in a country that sees that last alternative as the only alternative.
And now, manned spaceflight (the immediate precursor, at least)...
I'm sure that by now you've heard of Saturday's launch of Shenzhou (the press keeps translating it as "God Ship," but I understand that "god's ship" or even "divine mechanism" is closer, and that it also has the same pronounciation as "gods' land" -- which is a traditional Chinese reference to China itself). China stands on the verge of becoming the third spacefaring nation.
There's a lengthy description of the spacecraft (which appears to have a strong familial tie to Soyuz, and perhaps some Soyuz subsystems) and the program history in Encyclopedia Astronautica:
http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~mwade/craft/shenzhou.htm
The world gets more complex. The press releases keep mentioning the PRC's plans regarding lunar and planetary missions, sometimes manned; I wonder if this will be the start of a new space race? And will the military implications of PRC orbital capability (or other "payload" delivery, of course) help create a new Cold War?
Interesting times!
Troy Loney
Then comes Digital River again:
Dear Mr. Pournelle, I had recalled your previous discussion RE: Digital River Commerce System. I was able to finally remove the annoying icon on my taskbar, after downloading my software, but there is something you should know about Digital River. On 31 August, Egghead Software (www.egghead.com) ran an ad in a local newspaper (Orange County [CA] Register) for FREE* software from Symantec. I chose CleanSweep 2000, as I had an older version that kept crashing. After checking with Symantec to verify I qualified for the upgrade rebate, I logged onto the Egghead web site, where they verified the upgrade rebate ($20) and details, as well as the "Internet Purchase Rebate" of $15.95. I confirmed the purchase, and found myself at Digital River, (which I had no reason to believe was NOT a part of Egghead) and after downloading the confounded "download" software, made the transaction for $35.95 on a credit card, and sucessfully downloaded the software. That afternoon, I sent off a copy of the confirmation order, and rebate information to Symantec. Fast forward to18 November, 1999. I have just received the rebate from Symantec; no "Internet Rebate" included. I called Egghead, and they couldn't confirm a customer name/address (although they had my parent's address in their database from two years ago...) or order number. They had no record of an order. Finally, after about 25 minutes they determined the order must have been from a link on their Webpage to Digital River, (hmmm, EGGHEAD placed the newspaper ad) and they had nothing to do with my order. I made a first call to Digital River on 19 Nov., and after about 15 minutes of not knowing anything about rebates, Digital River's Customer Service said the rebates were being handled by " serviceplus.net ". I e-mailed them the pertinent info, including purchase confirmation, and responded that they were waiting for a financial release from Digital River, so it was not under their control. Two further calls to Digital River ended in terminal hold; I finally got through on 24 Nov. and was promised a call back "within a half hour." fast forward to today, 2 Dec. After waiting what seemed an eternity, I finally was able to speak to a supervisor", who said (albeit in a round about way) that Digital River holds rebates for a long time, in hopes that a lot of people either don't send them in, or forget about them. (This after three months.) After a bit more coaxing, I was informed that the supervisor would "see what he could do" about getting the rebate credited back to my credit card; but that will mean they have had my money (by the time credit comes in) for FOUR MONTHS! Since this was an "Internet Download Rebate", the supervisor wasn't able to even unsatisfactorily explain why the rebate couldn't be given at the time of purchase, and eliminate a lot of hassle and paperwork, even for Digital River. Needless to say, I certainly won't do business with a company like Digital River that only sends promised rebates to those that have the time and/or patience to repeatedly request them; I just thought you might like to know about my experience. Should you wish to use (any part) of this, I would prefer my e-mail address NOT be mentioned.
Yours truly,
Larry J. Rolewic LongBeach, CA
Caveat Emptor.
©
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Top
Friday December 3, 1999
A few comments on the WTO discussion.
I'm not afraid of free trade per-se. A little history: I've retrained myself completely twice in response to economic changes. Back in 1972, I bailed out on a PhD in algebraic topology with only a dissertation to go--NSF had cancelled much of the funding in the field, and it looked like there would be few jobs. So, having seen a computer once in my life, and with one course on programming Turing machines under my belt, I joined a major aerospace company as a software systems engineer. I did more than OK. Then in 1993, I with my twins in college, it became clear that I was no worse off doing a PhD full-time than working full-time. So I started a PhD in computational neuroscience, eventually doing my research in a behavioral psych lab, and finishing a month ago. It's painful, but as Pete Seeger notes, all lives move in circles. You're not working as a PhD psychologist now, are you?
I am afraid of globalization. Our long-term survival as a species and as a culture is bound up in the availability of a diversity of solutions. Ecosystems and economies survive longest when they incorporate multiple ways of doing the same thing. Then, if one approach becomes a disaster, there's another to substitute. Hence, whenever I hear of the WTO overriding local solutions to a perceived problem in the name of free trade, I shudder.
Simple economic systems are unstable. I suppose you've heard of the MIT beer game? A multi-stage distribution system is set up with a couple of key rules--no returns, and there are lags between orders and actions, and then the demand is slightly different from what the students are told. The result is theoretically chaotic (Larsen and Moesekilde). This is _important_. There is evidence that the bronze age civilizations of the Aegean (1200-1300 BCE) were dependent on such a system (van der Leeuw). They produced wool and other fibres locally, converted it into clothing, carried the clothing to Egypt and other advanced areas, traded it for elite goods, brought those back, and traded those in the Aegean for food and other materials. They became very efficient at running this system, until they overproduced, the value of their goods crashed, and things fell apart. The same thing happened about 1800 BCE in Spain, where a bronze manufacturing community built up their production to the point where they were producing enough bronze to meet the demand of the entire Western Mediterranean. The value of their product crashed, and they went out of business. Scholars will note that these systems lacked markets and money, so it was difficult to detect when things were going over the top, but the point is that a simple, highly efficient economy is one surprise away from a disaster.
Free public education is one of the mechanisms that are supposed to maintain diversity and adaptability. You can show theoretically that an economic system that is not challenged by external events will eventually converge to a state where there is so much capital accumulated that the value of labor is near zero, almost all wealth is held by a small number of families, and the only finished good production is for those families (Rader). Free public education is supposed to prevent this from happening, because it means new workers have useful skills and don't have a debt burden, so that they maintain enough demand that the economy continues to function. Economies have to be stirred, or they converge to a stasis (like the later Roman Empire) that can't generate enough of a surplus to respond to external events and maintain themselves. Ever wonder why urban populations collapsed in Europe between 200 and 800 CE? The system was eating its young. Don't go there.
--- Harry Erwin, PhD, <mailto:herwin@gmu.edu>, <http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin>, Senior SW Analyst and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science, George Mason University.
Thank you. Well argued. I have a few points.
First, retraining isn't hard for those at the top of the bell curve. It's inconvenient and annoying to have to do it, but it's probably good for us. There are few reading this site who couldn't manage to land on their feet when the wheel turns.
It's the chap who spent 25 years working in the steel mills, rightfully believing himself a good citizen and a valuable member of society, and living a middle class life, who now sees his job exported who concerns me. Then the GM plant closed in the San Fernando Valley, there were some other enterprises to take up the slack, but most of the workers ended up selling their houses and moving elsewhere; the character of the neighborhood changed entirely. Now "The Plant" is a mall, and the jobs are quite different, and it's more likely the wife who's employed in sales. It may be that I have a novelists imagination and I am overly concerned. it may be. But I am still concerned.
Your other point is worth pondering. It may be my Depression upbringing, or my Cold Warrior background, but I worry when the US isn't pretty well self-sufficient. We have never had an economy so dependent on keeping imports moving in. And we neglect the Navy...
For the more conventional comment:
Dear Jerry,
Without wishing to bombard you with economic arguments from Adam Smith, simply imagine that national boundaries are like (US) state boundaries ; there is little benefit in growing oranges in North Dakota or building cars in Alaska.
World trade is the same.
If you are more interested in a singular benefit for yourself (ie the USA) then you can apply all sorts of protectionism and it is completely self-defeating (retaliation and trade wars proliferate). You may decide on 10% but there's nothing to stop the EU deciding on 12.5%, then Australia at 20% and bop! We're all poor and shouting at each other again......
David J Burbage Blue Legend Software tel : +44 1628 410571 fax: +44 1628 770892 email: dave@blueleg.co.uk web: http://www.blueleg.co.uk
I am familiar with both Adam Smith and Ricardo, and I thoroughly understand that if the entire purpose of a nation is to maximize the Dow, Free Trade is the way to go.
I am not absolutely sure that unrestrained Free Trade is the right way to do it because I have not seen an economic model -- a real one, not hand waving -- that took into account the political necessity of paying off the people displaced by free trade. It may have been done but no economist I have met has shown me that model, and most say something inane about my reading of Ricardo, I have read Ricardo and he says nothing about political realities and just what you are supposed to do with the displaced people.
Classical economics assumes that people are fungible and there are no social costs to widespread displacement, uprooting communities, and creating anomie in a time when anyone with IQ 100 can get on the Internet and in ten minutes come up with the formulas for war gasses and high explosives, and in a week learn how these are made and from what starting chemical stocks.
Classical economics may be a good model of society, but the model is one of assignment, not classification. The difference between classification and assignment is that in one case you are looking for specific qualities to fill specific slots; in the other you must make an optimum allocation of everyone and you are not allowed to leave anyone out. If I can take the top 1% and discard the rest I will have few problems, but if I have to put everyone into the right job I can't do it. Mathematically that is equivalent to the traveling salesman problem and is insoluble; the market is a mechanism for working out solutions to that problem by the equivalent of brute force numerical analysis.
As I have said, it may be that I am overly concerned about both the dislocations of those over 40 in this rapidly changing economy -- I am already considered too old to be useful by anyone although I don't feel particularly old -- and about the specializations in the US and the loss of the old "good old American know-how" that let you assume that in any given American city there were people able to do just about anything you wanted to have done.
The destruction of our education system at the hands of the educational bureaucracy hasn't hurt. We in effect have a public school system for the upper middle class. For them it works very well. It's no so hot for the others. While in actuality anyone with IQ over 75 can learn to read by age 7, in the US about 30% never learn to read at all. Compound that with exporting the old "skilled labor" jobs of machine tool operations and such, and I see grounds for concern. Perhaps I shouldn't.
I found this view of the differing economic blocks in the world has some connection with the discussion of free trade and tariffs on your page.
http://www.stratfor.com/SERVICES/GIU/112999.asp
Regarding the free trade discussion;
I work in an area of the country where a lot of jobs are flowing out to Mexico and even to Asia. The displacement and disruption isn't seen readily by the larger society.
Now I personally am not going to be affected because I'm one of the high tech workers. But I have this penchant for turning over the possible consequences of actions, a character defect I suppose, but it would appear that the US is short changing its populace and driving itself into a two class society.
First the so called public education has really been only a babysitting service for the past thirty to forty years for suburban mom. At this of course it does quite well. At providing a universal education it doesn't even try. The results are two generations of people that are basically uneducated , in reality ignorant, in any of the sciences or technologies. I'm not here talking about the twenty percent that will go to college in spite of what the public schools do to them, nor am I talking about the lower ten to fifteen percent who have massive government programs for their support. No it's the broad majority of kids who have been uneducated who now see their livelihoods being taken over by people in other countries for a tenth of the wages. This is literal, not figurative.
It seems like we are making "Throw away people." What happens to all these people? What happens when the become a sizeable proportion of the population? Who will sway them?
It really doesn't seem to address the situation to blame these people for the situation they find themselves in but that is what I hear from most conservatives, among whom I usually count myself.
It seems almost a prescription for disaster.
In regard to what I call the AT&;T billing scam, I of course got caught with a twenty some dollar bill for a dollars worth of calls. Ah well, just another Harvard MBA scam to get quick bucks. Of course I cancelled the long distance carrier service and now I just use a calling card. We seem to have an epidemic of scams coming from the service companies. It is great sport though seeing what the latest scam is. Sometimes they can be downright devious. It says a lot about the general level of moral character of Harvard MBAs.
I like what Nancy Regan said. Just say no. My problem is that I worry that the MBAs will find some way to put a lien on my paycheck because of some service that they can provide whether I'm inclined to use it or not. I'm sure they are even now dreaming up arguments that they can present to the commissions to get the levies ok'd.
I guess living in Empire has it's advantages though.
regards; George Ditton
Well, you express my concerns well. I'm glad to see I am not the only one who worries about such things. Me, I'm all right, Jack; and most of the people I know are as well. And perhaps that's enough.
But I would feel a lot better about free trade if we had decent schools, and a LOT better if we had schools WORTH $8,000 per pupil per year. Give me $800,000 and 100 randomly selected kids, and I guarantee you I'd give them a better education than they are getting from the school system almost anywhere.
And when there are a LOT of essentially useless people of average intelligence? I don't know. But average isn't stupid.
Jerry,
If no one has already pointed this out to you, there is a beautiful and well-thought-out article by George Soros, proposing that the "Open Society" as envisioned by Karl Popper could be endangered by unrestricted capitalism...
http://www.community-work-training.org.uk/articles/soros.htm
-- Talin (Talin@ACM.org) "I am life's flame. Respect my name. www.sylvantech.com/~talin My fire is red, my heart is gold. www.hackertourist.com/talin Thy dreams can be...believe in me, If you will let my wings unfold..." -- Heather Alexander
Soros's essay was first published in Atlantic in 1997 and I recall it. Possony taught me to be an admirer of Popper, and I remain so; Popper's basic thesis is that there is such a thing as ultimate truth, but we here below will never be privileged to know it: or as least not to know for sure that we know it. That being the case, all questions must be regarded as at least in part open. On the other hand, we are justified in acting on the basis of what we know now. We have to be, or we would never get anything done.
"Know then thyself, presume not gods to scan
the proper study of mankind is man,"
said Pope in his wonderful couplets, who went on to define man as a little lower than the angels, but higher than the beasts. No bad view, and one I think consistent with Popper's thoughts. In any event, Sorel raises questions without answering them, which is proper; and is essay is worth the ten minutes it will take you to read it. I thank Talin for reminding me of it.
Edmund Burke said that a nation is something more than a joint stock company. I believe he was right. For more on that, see Saving Private Ryan.
And see below for more on the Free Trade issue and the Nation State.
And now for something completely different:
I noticed a discussion of this on your site, and have a comment, which you quite likely know all about already..
I always thought that an important factor in the crisis of the literate civilizations of the Middle East and Europe at the end of the Bronze Age was the diffusion of iron-working. When bronze was the best alloy available, only the rich ( i.e. sophisticated, literate types tied into trade networks) could have afforded bronze, and they could usually defeat people without it. This is just because tin is so hard to get. After the exhaustion of the initial meager Anatolian deposits, people had to go a long way, sometimes to Cornwall, to get tin. On the other hand, although extracting iron from ores is much harder, iron ore is everywhere, and once the know-how spread, the relative strength of the barbarians greatly increased. The smallish, professional armies of the civilized states lost most of their technical edge, which leaves you up to our ass in Dorians.
Right now we're probably entering the Plutonium Age.
Greg Cochran
Greg Cochran is always worth taking seriously: if you're not familiar with his hypothesis that most "hereditary defect" disorders are diseases caused by germs, you should look into it. Most interesting use of evolutionary biology I have seen in years, with immense practical consequences.
The Iron Age hypothesis isn't entirely new, of course. H. Beam Piper's science fiction used that hypothesis, with his modernization having power reactor metals as the critical item; that includes Thorium, which turns out to be more common than Beam supposed; also, of course, if you have the kind of anti-gravity civilization Beam described, you will almost undoubtedly have fusion.
The Minoan sea-based empire was almost certainly based on something like a monopoly on tin, and thus bronze. In legend the Cretan capital of King Minos had no army and no need for one, but was protected by Talos, a bronze man who was killed in mysterious ways. Easily interpreted as Iron Age barbarians attacking after the Fleet was nearly destroyed in earthquakes and tsunamis. Fascinating period, and I tried to write an historical novel about it, but I foundered on the problem that I liked the Minoans much more than I did the Greeks...
Office 2000 Registration
Tracy Walters tracy@nemontel.net
Jerry, On the Office 2000 registration issue, I've been using Office 2000 since it was released, having obtained a copy by mail order directly from Microsoft (through the technology guarantee). Several others I correspond with are running it also. We all obtained it separately, and from a variety of sources. All are based in the U.S. To date, none of us has had the registration problem being discussed. As far as I know, we all installed it normally, input the CD codes when asked, and the installation completed without incident. I have called for help on the product twice (once for a Word 2000 problem, and once for a Publisher 2000 problem). I had to register when calling, as I have had to do with every Microsoft product I have purchased and called for help on. It is not painful to divert to someone who takes your info and registers you. Indeed, I try to be legal on all my software. No one should get ripped off for his or her hard work. Whether or not you like the company, or the product, they deserve to be paid for it.
A comment on Office 2000. I purchased the Premium version, and it has Publisher 2000 with it. I have come to love this product. I've used other desktop publishing software, and I like this much better. I was helping my father-in-law put together a brochure for his business, and when we found the cost of getting the desktop publishing done was going to be in the $400-$500 range, I decided to try to do it myself. After all, I had all the tools, I just had to deal with the learning curve.
The learning curve amounted to about 20 minutes.
Granted, I am familiar with the computer, and have used other products before, to a limited extent, but this was so simple, I thought I was doing something wrong.
When I finished the layout, I began looking for a printer to complete the job. Publisher 2000 does color separations, the basic requirement that a printer will have for a four color print process. Most up to date print houses could take the job, so I started shopping for quality and price. Just as I started this, I received an email from Microsoft (I am a Systems Networking Consultant, so this happens a lot) about a small business success story regarding a print house in Livingston, Montana, who does their work across the web, named Express Color Printing. Since I am a Montana resident, and needed a print shop to do my work, I decided to check them out at www.printingforless.com.
What I found was amazing. These folks accept Desktop Publishing file from most of the major products, uploaded across the web, tweak the job, post a proof on the web, and print the job. You never have to go to the facility; all the ordering, processing and proofing can take place completely by the web and email. This is very important to me, as I am over 90 miles from the nearest print shop. I did call the folks a couple times, as I was new to the whole process, and each time, a knowledgeable person who had all the answers I needed, right at hand, answered the phone immediately. It was a great experience. I received the brochures 2 days ago and they look great.
If you recall, shopping price was an issue at the start. One of the best parts is that, since I did the desktop publishing myself, I saved about $400. Express Color Printing's prices were much lower than the competitors, also. By the time we were done, what had started out as a 500 brochure run was able to become a 2000 brochure job, for less money.
If anyone has need of a print shop, I highly recommend giving the Publisher 2000, Express Color Printing process a try.
Tracy Walters
Apparently the registration by phone thing was an experiment in Australia and is a feature in academic discount products. That particular flap is over.
But you give me the opportunity to think again about 2000 in general, and I am coming to the conclusion that I rather like it. See the upcoming column. On balance, many of the problems I had were bad habits on my part; also, the hardware has once again erased the problems of program size and speed. With a reasonably modern system you will have to relearn some habits, but Office 2000 is worth the upgrade. I reluctantly came to that conclusion, but I have come to it.
And a good summary of the problem of a New World Order:
WORLD TRADE AND THE NATION STATE
Having reviewed a number of the articles on the WTO meeting in Seattle I am finding a strange and disturbing dissonance in the arguments of both the proponents and protestors. On the part of the former there is an assumption that all goods and services will be accessible at all times with the principle of comparative advantage taking dominance. This literally means that there is nothing that is exempt. The proponents of the latter position stress the need for governance over the local economy. Unfortunately they do not take this to the level of "nationhood" but rather view the entire process as some sort of individuals rights issue which, of course, is the argument from which the former proponents base their point.
Neither side recognises that the nation state is the structure through which both the laws which permit free trade and the covenants which permit trade to be governed by a higher morality exists. Without the nation state there is no structure to maintain the high levels of economy and culture and to preserve and incubate concepts, law and the individual. To wit was it Aristotle who envisaged a new philosophy or was it Athens that protected him and permitted philosophy to flourish. Was it Brunnel who triggered the Industrial revolution with engineering or was it Great Britain's empire that permitted the machines to be built in safety, security and a stable supply of raw material. I guess what I'm saying is that without the nation state no great movements have flourished.
Now both the WTO and the organised protestors want to destroy the nation state to create some sort of NEW WORLD ORDER to create chaos out of order, to take protection out of the national role, to supplant the rights of the individual to those of the group be it a political class or a corporation. This is wrong! I believe that every nation must be permitted the right to produce enough food to feed its populace albeit at a greater cost, to provide the necessities to defend itself both in terms of armament and inputs, and the ability to maintain the technology required to keep its communication, transportation and civil infrastructure without the need to depend on extra-territorial firms. As an aside I seem to remember that Belgium had ordered guns from Krupp to arm their border forts with Germany and France both of which had signed neutrality agreements with Belgium. I believe that the United States is in the same situation with the production of memory chips in Taiwan should the People's Republic launch a seaborne invasion.
Where are the defenders of nationhood, of the unity of culture and language, of the uniqueness of the geographical demarcations that have become the nations that have nurtured the scientific, cultural and technical environments that have permitted the very wealth that has permitted both the protesters and world traders to exist?
Allan Mason
Good summary. Thanks. And there is more at Free trade Part two. Sorry to loop back.
Dr Pournelle, Recent events, some I recall from my training exercises on the island of Kahoolave in Hawaii, and this article, make me wonder just how serious is the US public to national defense interests? Please see: http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/vieques991203.html And note the last paragraph, particularly the words about restitution. In my opinion this is the real issue- a free ride from Uncle Sam disguised as restitution for wrongs done by the government. I don't think citizens realize just how thinly US forces are stretched, just how much budgets are slashed, and how under-trained we are becoming. We are in for a real whipping soon, and not from two-bit dictators like Milosevich or Hussein, but a real, concerted threat. Vietnam was only 30 years ago. I think that is sufficient time for history to repeat itself.
George Laiacona III <george@eisainc.com> "It is always best to start running away early, before the rush. That way there are fewer bodies to trip over." -Gil the Treacherous "Of course I joined the outlaws. They have the coolest outfits." -Tex
For those reading chronologically, there is a bit looped back above on Free Trade and education, and Talin on Soros on Popper. Sorry.
©
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Top
Saturday December 4, 1999
Jerry,
While _Salon_ has its share of eye-rolling articles, this one struck me as rather sober:
http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/feature/1999/12/03/wto/index.html
--Erich Schwarz
Thanks.
Dear Jerry,
Regarding your "morning" collection:
... I took my pills, and something possessed me to photograph the "morning" collection. It is, I fear, rather impressive, all vitamins and food supplements. One of these days I'll go over what they all are. Are they all needed? Probably not. Which ones are? That is what I am not sure of. Some of this helps: clearly I get a lot done for someone my age ...
This is something that I think a lot of us are interested in and as there is a lot of hype out there from all the people selling this stuff, I'd be very interested in you following up on what everything is that you've decided to take on a daily basis.
Thanks, Alan Donders alan_donders at hotmail dot com
When I get a round tuit. It's tricky giving that kind of advice. Life Extension Foundation found itself raided by gunmen with Federal badges because they might have mislabelled something or given an unsubstantiated claim. In my case it needs to be absolutely clear that I am not giving health advice... Ain't government wonderful? But we were born free.
Over-Reaction to Anti-WTO Protests Scott Kitterman kitterma@erols.com
About the WTO itself, I guess I could best describe myself as deeply ambivalent. What really shocked me was the local police reaction to the protesters. From news reports, I understand that the local police used pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets on protesters that were engaged in peaceful civil disobedience.
I do not understand the need to use force against someone who is just sitting there (this apparently started before the violence). Either the individual is a free citizen who has a right to be where they are and they should be left alone or they are violating a law and they should be arrested. Use of force to just make them go away, even if it's not deadly force as the Seattle Chief of Police emphasized in his press conference, has no place in this country. If someone is actively resisting arrest or engaged in violent activity, it's different, but that isn't what happened here.
Where does the state get the right to attack it's citizens? At the least, this is ammunition for the militia types who spend their spare time watching for the black UN helicopters. It's got me wondering where the rights of citizens in this country have gone.
According to the papers, some people who lived on Capitol Hill went out to see what the shouting was about, were ordered back inside, and when they asked why, were pepper sprayed in their own front yards.
But we were born free.
Hi Jerry;
I'm not sure if you've solved your email list problem: I know I haven't, and I use Outlook 98 and a hodpe-podge of other tools a few of which may help you.
My list is 5,000+ and rapidly outgrowing Outlook (my primary .pst file is ~35 meg, and I have 3 others that are usually open, as well).
Currently, I mail my free letter which goes to everybody on the list using Aurand Group Mail ( http://www.group-mail.com/ ). It works pretty well, and will split your messages into any arbitrarily small groups -- I currently use groups of 25 -- and then send them out successively.
My local, and small, primary ISP is not too picky, as long as no one complains, and I don't bog their server down, so I still mail paying subscriber letters out using Outlook, in two groups of about 300 each.
I recently purchased Advanced Mail Verify ( http://www.elcomsoft.com/amv.html ) which has dramatically cut back on the amount of bounced email I get back. (It's amazing how many email addresses go 'bad' every week!).
I suspect both of these programs are used by spammers more than anyone else, but the are making my life easier, and might be of use to you.
I still wonder how the 'big boys' do it. I'd love to be able to mail directly off an Access database, and have automated subscribe/cancel/address change capability, but I haven't found that, yet.
Anyhow, I'm glad to know you are still around; I've read your columns off-and-on for years, but had just assumed that when Byte bit the dust, your computer musings did, too.
Best wishes,
Ben Powell
(the email address this was mailed from is one of my anti-spam safety addresses; as you can guess, it's not much longer for this world. Richard Smith of Phar Lap has scared me to death this fall. And, since I installed BlackICE and saw how many unfriendly probes I was getting, I've become totally paranoid. You may post this email, if you wish, but if you do, please replace the signature email with the 'safe' one.)
Well, in my case I have managed to make Outlook behave: I sent a mailing today, and it worked. So I guess whatever problems I had have been fixed. Now if Pair.com would stop being so slow. It's always something, I guess.
Actually, it looks as if the net traffic was a good part of the problem; although pair did seem to have some server problems. But they are moving so they have a good excuse.
©
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Top
Sunday December 5, 1999
The following is long and well worth reading. I'll comment at the end.
On international trade and other subjects.
Dear Jerry, I've read your columns with interest for many years. You were a major reason for my continuing to renew my Byte subscription and your columns were a major loss when publication ceased.
I do, however, strongly disagree with your take on tariffs and international trade as well as with the sources of problems in the economy. I'll deal with these in turn and hope I won't run on so long as to try your patience.
Tariffs
First, on tariffs. You advocate a tariff for revenue and suggest a level of 10%. In 1997 total goods imports were $877.3 billion. Goods imports are the stuff you can charge tariffs on--not services. The fine meals you consume in Paris aren't going to be taxed by the US (all my numbers come from the 1999 Economic Report of the President at http://www.gpo.ucop.edu/index.html . There are better data sources, but this was easy to obtain. The last full year for some series was 1997, so I used that as a current number. None of my comments would be changed with the 98 figures, but I'm too lazy to look them up). A 10% tariff would yield $87.73 billion. Federal on-budget outlays in 1997 were $1,290.6 billion. Your tariff would pay for a little under 7% of the federal budget. Indeed, it would pay only about 33% of the defense budget of $270.5 billion.
These calculations assume that the tariff has no effect on imports. Of course, the impact of tariffs is to reduce imports which means a lower level of receipts. The more effective a tariff is as a barrier to trade the less effective it is as a source of revenue.
Tariffs were an effective revenue source when government was very small. In a modern economy, especially one with as small an international sector as the US, they simply aren't a feasible alternative to income or value-added taxes.
On the impact of trade on manufacturing and employment.
I think you overrate the deleterious effects of international trade on the US economy. When you look at the externalities you seem to ignore the employment impact of rising exports (note: for purposes of full disclosure I should say I'm employed in higher education--a major export industry). The US is a formidable competitor internationally. In 1997 we exported a total of $973 billions of goods and services. $679 billion of that was goods. There's a reason why the Japanese have substantial barriers to trade--they're terrified of the productivity and efficiency of US industry. I'll have more to say about Japan below, also more about US productivity.
Net exports of goods and services in 1997 (exports minus imports) were -$110 billion. US GDP in 1997 was $8,111 billion. Net exports of goods and services were only 1.4% of GDP. Not an impressive number, but still an overly large measure of potential externalities. It's >>Change<< that causes misery. We'd need to look at the change in this number over time to get a better idea of the externalities caused by trade. Finally, as you know, the overall balance of payments must balance. That $110 billion (augmented by balance on the income portion of current account) must be reflected in capital flows. I.e. an investment in the US economy.
I don't have a good measure of the "externalities" associated with all of this. But it's far from obvious that negative externalities offset the positive. The direct effects of freer trade, as you know, are unambiguous; not just on the Dow, as you mention, but in the form of increased quality and variety of goods and services at lower prices.
Still there is the falling employment in manufacturing industry. We need to note, in passing, that US manufacturing output is >>increasing<<. The Index of Industrial Production for manufacturing has been trending upwards with only momentary pauses for decades. It fell in '90 and '91, but has gone up every year since. Why then has manufacturing employment dropped? I mentioned above that US manufacturers are very efficient. Manufacturing productivity has been steadily increasing--this is really just another way of saying that output is rising and employment is falling.
This productivity has made the US competitive internationally. Many Mexican manufacturers understood this and dreaded NAFTA. Even with cheaper labor they knew they couldn't compete with the price and quality of the goods manufactured by US firms.
There's another factor, too. It's well known that the demand for manufactured goods in a developed economy is income inelastic. That simply means that a 1% increase in income will cause a less than 1% increase in demand for manufactured goods. So manufactured goods have been falling as a percentage of total output. This would have happened even without any impact of international trade. Manufactured goods will continue to fall as a percentage of GDP.
In summary there are three things which have caused misery amongst workers in manufacturing: --Rising productivity --Demand falling as a percent of GDP --Competition from foreign manufacturers. The relative importance of these three effects varies across industries, but it's clearly misleading to attribute it all to foreign trade. Indeed, it's not clear that it's the major contributor.
One of your correspondents has already pointed to the similarity to agriculture. During the last century we went from having a majority of workers employed in agriculture to having total agricultural output produce by about 2% of workers (I didn't check this number it could be a bit more or a bit less--it accounts for people working on farms, not in food processing or agricultural equipment manufacturing). The family farm has been disappearing for decades. All of this has happened in an industry which is a major >>exporter<<. It was caused by the other two forces I mentioned above. Demand for food is income inelastic and American farmers are extraordinarily productive.
What happened during the last century to agriculture is happening now in manufacturing. We can talk about how we might ease the transition, but eventually the force of change will be unstoppable. Better, I will argue below, to allow the changes to happen rather than postpone them and have more dramatic change later.
On Economic Change
I said that it's change that causes problems. Changing patterns of demand mean that people are laid off and must try to find where the economy is expanding and find work there. This is damned hard. Most will never find where the jobs are and many who do will find that they don't have the skill set necessary to get a decent job in an expanding industry.
It will never be pleasant, but generally many small changes will be easier to deal with than one big change. It's easier to find a job when you're the only one looking than when everybody is looking. The problem with protectionist policies, and other policies like industrial or farm subsidies, is that they don't so much prevent as postpone change. When change does come it's likely to be dramatic and, therefore, more painful.
Consider Japan today. I highly recommend reading the "Survey of Business in Japan" in the Nov. 27--Dec. 3 Economist. Most industries in Japan have been coddled by government for decades. As a result, most industries are inefficient and non-competitive internationally (see the chart in the aforementioned article giving an industry-by-industry comparison of productivity in Japan and the US). The economy now faces a long period of restructuring and recovery. In the long run life will be better for Japanese consumers and Japanese industry will be competitive. But just now they're facing some very unpleasant times.
Or consider pre-Thatcher Britain. Weak industries were protected; mines which should have been shut down were kept open. It was the era of "I'm all right, Jack." Thatcher and her government put an end to that, but at the cost of a great deal of pain to British workers.
Or the case with which I'm most familiar. I've spent a lot of time during the past several years in Central Europe, mostly in Poland, but also in the Czech Republic and elsewhere. That's the most extreme case of dramatic change that you're likely to see. The economies had been divorced from economic forces for years. When change finally came it was dramatic and, for many workers, extremely unpleasant. Industries were inefficient, workers had low productivity, and quality of goods was low. Introducing the market meant factories had to fire workers, restructure management or, in many cases, close. The economies are growing now, but the pain isn't over. It will be another decade or more before the sclerotic industries in that area are brought up to Western standards.
The case I'm making is for an acceptance of change and a willingness to adapt rather than to postpone through protectionism or subsidies.
Education and the work force.
I haven't dealt with your point that half of the population is below average. It's true; but that half can, given a decent chance, participate more fully in the economy. The problem is they're not given the chance. I read much of what you're saying as arguing that the return to education is unusually high today. This is pretty well established empirically.
What we need is an educational system which does let everyone reach their potential. If you're to start that crusade I'll pick up my pitchfork and join you. I work in Chicago. The damage that has been done by the Chicago public schools in recent decades is incalculable.
Trade and diversification.
Finally (yes, the end is in sight) one of your correspondents made an argument based on the strange point that increased trade and globalization will lead to economies becoming more similar. The whole point of trade is to allow specialization within economies and differentiation among economies. I can read the remainder of his note only as a cautionary note on what will happen if we don't allow economies to trade.
I have put far too high a demand on your time. Thanks for your indulgence in reading this. Best wishes to you and your family for the holidays.
Adam Gehr agehr@mozart.fin.depaul.edu
We don't differ as much as it might appear.
Regarding the revenue: if the Federal budget were where it ought to be, which is about half what it is, then the amount raised by tariff would be about 15%, which is about what it ought to be. Historically, the Federal government lived largely on tariff revenue, and even generated embarrassing surpluses, but that was another time. Note though that the major object to getting rid of inheritance taxes is the $40 billion in revenue it would cost to be shut of them: my scheme would more than cover that. Also understand I have no great problem with inheritance taxes on large amounts, say $10 million and more, or liquid assets; what I really dislike is the death tax on farm land and homes and such things, where the government assesses the property at what it would bring if sold, and usually then forces the sale. This is socially disruptive and ends family control of businesses, and I don't like that at all. Of course it's a different argument from trade, but the revenue ties them somewhat together.
As to the rest, I suspect we are talking about 2 different things. My concern is with the changing character of industry in this country. I don't think all our workers ought to have to compete against subsistence wage slaves.
You say "The case I'm making is for an acceptance of change and a willingness to adapt rather than to postpone through protectionism or subsidies." I have to agree in general, while protesting that getting over some of the effects needs more attention than we have been giving it, particularly since the Federal Government is responsible for destroying the school system that might have made all this conversation nugatory. If we had good schools we would have adaptive people.
And I have been working THAT particular crusade most of my life. The "National Defense Education Act," otherwise known as "Federal Aid to Education" was a disaster; I said it would be at the time. I grew up in a land with 98% literacy and no federal aid to education. I now live in a land with 70% literacy at best and that's under a generous definition of literacy. I grew up in a land in which 9th graders routinely read Silas Marner, The Lady of the Lake, Hiawatha, Longfellow in general, and other works of literature, and routinely took algebra and trigonometry in 10th and 11th grades. No more.
My mother taught first grade in rural Florida in the 20's and every one of her kids could read at the end of first grade. There aren't heavy discipline problems in first grade: and if kids learn to read then they don't tend to be a disruptive in later grades, where the rightfully understand that as illiterates they have no future in the schools. But that's another crusade.
I am perfectly willing to give up my tariff schemes in exchange for something meaningful put back in people's lives; for an end to the war on families and moral values and social cohesion and indeed on everything except barriers to trade.
Thank you for a thoughtful reply.
Entire
contents copyright 1999 by Jerry E. Pournelle. All rights reserved.
Comments and discussion welcome.
