straydog
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Re: The Snot Report....its a biggie this time !
On Thu, 22 Dec 2004, Kamal R. Prasad wrote:
> Date: 22 Dec 2004 23:00:18 -0800
> From: Kamal R. Prasad <kamalp@acm.org>
> Newsgroups: sci.research.careers
> Subject: The Snot Report....its a biggie this time !
>
> On Fri, 17 Dec 2004, Kamal R. Prasad wrote:
>
>> Date: 17 Dec 2004 00:31:08 -0800
>> From: Kamal R. Prasad <kamalp@acm.org>
>> Newsgroups: sci.research.careers
>> Subject: The Snot Report....its a biggie this time !
>>
>> Kamal R. Prasad wrote:
>>>
>>> Sputnik was never a threat to americans -any more than the earth
>>> simulator by NEC is.
>>> The threat wasn't the satellite per se, of course, but the nuclear
>>> warhead delivery capability that the launch vehicle implied. And
>>> yes, that WAS a threat, and if you don't think so you should read
>>> some history of the Cuban missle crisis and how close we came to
>>> Armageddon. The NEC simulator isn't a threat. When did I ever
>>> imply that it was? As a meteorologist I find it an amusing waste
>>> of machine cycles, like many (but not all) such projects, but it
>>> isn't a threat.
>>
>> For every scientific achievement, there is a dual-use application.
>
>> I hardly see how penicillin can be used as a bioweapon. I hardly see
> how
>> electric light bulbs can hurt anyone unless you put them on incoming
>> warheads to frighten people before they are hit.
>
> Imagine fighting an enemy that does not know what a light bulb is?
You presented this speculative situation without giving enough details of
other factors that are required if you want MY response.
The
> invention is trivial by today's standards. But at one pt of time,
> having access to the technology would have made a world of a
> difference on the battlefield.
You started out with every scientific invention has a dual-use and I
interpreted that as a war-application vs a peace-application. So far, you
have been basically careless in contructing enough thoughts for a useful
discussion.
>> Lots of countries can hit a missile at India, but the question on my
>> mind is what they will get besides nuclear pollution by doing so?
>
>> The target will be vaporized.
> And what will the enemy gain by vapourizing the target?
When the USA atom bombed Japan, the gain was a very quick peace (and the
only additional discussion on this issue is whether the USA, if given
another chance, would have done the same thing).
>> Why does India have nuclear weapons?
> We have nukes pointed at us from both China and Pakistan. In order to
> ensure parity/detente, the govt has nukes pointed on both China and
> Pakistan.
That's funny, I'll bet they say the same thinkg about India.
And, that's the same line of thinking between the USA/USSR back a few
decades ago.
> The
>> cuban missile crisis was a result of the cold war, meaning the
>> russians wanted to gain an edge in the on-going war.
>
>> And, lets see, India has no cold war with Pakistan? And, Pakistan has
> no
>> disputes with India?
> That is one based on territorial dispute -which the cold war wasn't.
What the basis is is irrelevant. There IS a dispute.
> The cold war was about ideology, affliation to a club etc.. The
> dispute between India and Pakistan is more akin to the dispute between
> Protestants and Catholics in N. Ireland.
Yeah, and if they had nukes, they'd use them on each otehr. They certainly
had guns and explosives and they were going off all the time.
>>> Americans are obsessed with notions of
>>> superiority and that is why they consider it a threat.
>>> Please don't generalize.
>> Alright. But it is US govt. policy to maintain a pre-eminent position
>> in science and technology.
>
>> It is the US govt policy to maintain a pre-eminent position in
> military
>> strength. The position of the NSA and CIA is to look out for
> "American
>> Interests" (whether you or I like them is irrelevant). All else is
>> debatable.
>
> There is nothing wrong with funding research in S&T -if that is what
> they intended. But they seem to have other things on mind i.e.
> maintaining a lead on everyone else, so that history will look back at
> the US as the greatest nation on Earth.
History, as I have read, shows that powers have, as far back as the
records show, come into existence and gone out of existence in "cycles"
that no one in history has shown will ever stop and end in permanent
stability. The wars may continue and be fought more in the future in
corporate executive offices than in military combat, but the cycles will
continue. The USA, today, is a military bully and a cash cow for all of
its trading partners. I do not see the "greatness" that we were 50 years
ago.
> Its as if some other country making
>> progress in S&T is akin to posing a threat to the US citizenry.
>
>> Already polls in the US are showing a majority opinion that it is bad
> to
>> offshore jobs. The threat comes from greedy selfish corporate
> executives.
>
> So? How many of those offshored jobs belong to americans -either
> legally or morally?
All of them.
Investors are free to invest their capital where
> they like
Its not investors, its executives who make the decisions. Investors just
want ROI, they don't care about anything else.
-and if they can get more value for their investment by
> hiring people in 3rd world countries, I don't see why you should have
> a problem with that.
US corporations want to make money off US people and save money off non-US
people.
OK, what is your problem? Lets see how you feel when China takes something
away from you or your contry. Lets see if your dispute with Pakistan ends
in a way you don't like. You're not going to have a problem with that, eh?
>
>>> The way I look
>>> at it, a scientific achievement by another country is as much an
>>> achievement as one by the US.
>>> As a scientist, so do I.
>> Alright. I meant if I were you, I would appreciate the russians'
>> achievement.
>
>> There is "old science" where it doesn't matter who discovers
> something and
>> the "new science" which is to grab it, keep it a secret, get a patent
> on
>> it, and make money off of it and in 3rd world countries the "new
> science"
>> is to make it anyway and forget the patent, the royalty, the
> legalities
>
> How did you imagine that a patent is not valid in a WTO signatory
> country?
Because software theft in India is very high. Also its very high in China
and other SEA countries. And, there is a very high amount of counterfiet
products coming into the USA, too. This is fact. The laws are not being
enforced. So, all of you "nice" people over there... just stealing
everything from us.
>> and thus we have, in the USA and elsewhere, lots of counterfiet
> products
>> and in 3rd world 95% of all the software is stolen without payment.
>
> Since I live in the 3rd world and since you generalize without having
> stepped into one,
I've been in Mexico, Russia, and Bulgaria. At least one of those will be
considered by many people as 3rd world. YOu don't know where I have been.
let me tell you that no company in India worth its
> name will want to keep an illegal copy of sw on the workplace.
That is not what is in our newspapers.
Most of
> the pirated sw exists in non-commercial premises.
It does not matter whetehr it is commercial or non-commercial.
When you export a
> product to the US, US law impacts the product meaning one can take a
> foreign company to a US court of law over pirating sw or not paying
> royalty.
There is some discovery of counterfiet products, but the latest news is
that China/SEA countries (and others) where this happens are still not
enforcing their laws or policing these factories!!! It is still profitable
to be a theif in these places, like India, where corruption is very high.
>>>
>>> I hope you haven't forgotten Ricardo and his theory of comparative
>>> advantage -which is perhaps what offshoring is all about.
>>> I have not forgotten it, but I try to ignore it and most other
>>> blather from economists.
>>
>> Its not blather. Its plain economics.
>
>> Plain economics has been preaching how good everything is in the USA
> but
>> in reality debt is up, deficit is up, savings is down, job loss is
>> continuing at a great rate, and many other bad things are happening,
> and
>> we, in the USA, are going to have another depression. The economists
> are
>> full of bullshit.
>
> It hasn't been painting a rosy picture -and in order for it to be
> accepted to be correct, it doesn't have to ensure that the US economy
> improves.
I don't follow this.
For the most part, economists have been a bit behind the
> curve on how an economic powerhouse like the US could end up in
> shambles.
Nobody knows everything or enough to make good predictions or preventions.
They all still disagree on lots of things and when I read what any
economist says, I understand LESS of it than anything else written by
anyone else.
> If another country can produce
>> cheaper & better goods -it makes sense to let them do that job,
>
>> It makes sense only to executives who will steal a job from an
> employee
>> that pays him $40k per year, and then give $20k to an Indian (who
> lives in
>> a coutry cheaper to live in but has less standard of living) and put
> the
>> remaining $20k into the executive bonus or pay.
>
> There is nothing stopping shareholders from ensuring the benefits
> don't stop at the executive -but actually flow to the shareholders.
Shareholders do NOT run the company. You are mistaken in this. What goes
to shareholders is like a giant gambling game, with gambling psychology,
and mechanisms for cheating in fact and cheating by games. I can give you
several book titles you need to read about this. The facts are that
executive pay and compensation has been going up 20-200% per year for the
last decade. And, its getting worse.
Shareholders only make money when the price goes up. Not anything else.
They lose money when price goes down. There are more stocks going down
than go up. Most companies go OUT of business (the FEW who remain, get
bigger as the competitors get driven out of business). You need to
understand how this really works.
>
> and do
>> something which you are better at(Im not sure what that would be for
>> americans right now).
>
>> We make the finest military weapons in the world and great special
> effects
>> movies. I have not yet heard of a great movie fro India yet.
> My original pt was that I do not know what that occupation is
I'll call it the defense industry.
-that
> can absorb hordes of displaced american workers. You do have lots of
> fields where americans work, but can they accomodate many/most of the
> individuals who lose out to cheaper labour overseas?
WE've been losing jobs for the last 2-3 decades. The only thing that saves
us is new jobs being created, but more of them are low-paying. Someday we
will collapse.
> No country has been able to change that basic
>> law as yet.
>
>> Russia did in 1917. Indian Ghandi threw out the British. This can
> happen
>> again.
> I meant the law of comparative advantage -not laws enacted by
> disconnected politicians/administrators.
Forget the economic laws. Even in ancient Greek times and even before
that, there were no "economists" but its pretty clear that Troy controled
the trade between Greece and all points north of the land we now call
Turkey. You impose 'tax' on anyone and they will not be happy.
>>> Much as a patriotic president or businessowner may want, he cannot
>>> change the fact that somethings are better/cheaper made outside
> than
>>> inside the US -and that is what the customer will opt for.
>>> Not if the customer is sufficiently brainwashed.
>> Yeah -ford & gm must be having a tough time painting the american flag
>> on their cars to help them compete with Toyota and Honda.
>
>> Ford and GM are the best examples of the worst greedy and selfish
>> corporate executives. They all know that they are in the business of
>> making money and not in the business of making cars.
> And which of their japanese competitors isn't in the business of
> making money by selling cars?
There is much more emphasis in Japan to make quality and reliability. Its
a fact.
>>> Now you're ignoring economics. The Chinese are artificially
>>> manipulating the yuan, just like the Japanese did with the yen for
>>> a while. It ultimatley backfired on the Janpanese (I just read
>>> that chapter of _Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial
>>> Speculation_ last night). It may backfire on the Chinese.
>>
>> The USD is inflated against just about every other 3rd world country.
>
>> This is circular reasoning. By definition, any 3rd world country has
> a lot
>> of nothing that is worth nothing or almost nothing. Flesh can be
> bought
>> very much cheaper in India.
>
> What are the chances that you can live comfortably in the US on a
> salary paid to an engineer in India?
What does it take to live comfortably in India? We have nice stories here
in the USA that a US person can retire in Mexico and live more comfortably
on less money.
My experience is that earning a
> salary of $20,000 p.a in India is like earning a salary of $100,000 in
> the US.
OK, this is essentially the same answer as I gave above.
>
>> India is 1 of those countries, and offshoring is a result of that
>> inflated currency.
>
>> Its not inflated currency, its cheap labor.
> How cheap can labour get when people in the US are willing to work for
> survival wages ?
It doesn't matter; the stories I hear is that employers here won't even
look at a resume or CV if it has that the person is born and raised in the
USA. They want someone on any visa that requires sponsoring and who will
work cheap.
> The chinese have pegged their currency to
>> *DISSUADE* currency speculators from playing havouc and not to gain an
>> unfair advantage.[I don't represent them -but that is my conclusion
>> from the facts on hand].
>
>> China is still also a poor country but gaining in status (ownership
> of
>> cars, refrigerators, TV sets) very rapidly.
> Yes -they have a ton of T bills to spend.
And, they like that.
> Since 1994 to 2004, the US economy has gone
>> up and them come down, and so has its currency vis-a-vis other
>> non-pegged currencies. If they had wanted an unfair advantage, they
>> could have allowed their currency to depreciate when other currencies
>> were depreciating wrt the USD.
>
>> Other things can be done to manipulate currency.
> Yes -but my understanding is that they are more interested in avoiding
> a crisis like the asian currency crisis in 1987 than in putting blue
> collars out of work in the US. If you want them to rationalize their
> currency, your govt will have to give them assurances that they won't
> land them in a soup.
All of this stuff is more complicated than this and banks and governments
like to "tweak" things sometimes according to mechanisms I don't follow.
>>> If they don't want to use their inflated
>>> currency -then why have it inflated in the first place? Its like
>>> saying you want to manufacture counterfeit currency -but not put it
>>> into circulation.
>>> But what does that have to do with my point?
>> It has something to do with hoping walmart doesn't stock chinese
>> goods. You have an inflated currency precisely to buy more imported
>> goods with fewer dollars.
>
>> Our currency is NOT inflated. The issue is cheap labor. If we had
> zero
>> imports and zero exports, or close to it, we would have a situation
>> closer to a hundred years ago and the USA was not doing so poorly,
> Compare the salary in USD terms of a middle class worker in India and
> his living std - and tell me why you cannot enjoy the same std of
> living with that salary in the US. Is it because the USD cannot buy
> all that it seems to imply via the exchange rate?
YOu would have to give me lots of data on India: rent, tax, food,
transportation, healthcare expenditures, ...lots of things including what
is average "standard" for your country. "Same" standard of living? It
needs to be defined. But lots of people in the world want a western
standard of living (TV, gadgets, cars, airconditioning, plumbing in the
house, etc.) and it needs money they don't have.
> If the currency hadn't been inflated,
>> imported goods would automatically be expensive and not stocked at
>> price-competitive stores like walmart.
>
>> The argument should really be based on cheap labor, not currency.
> Your problem is that you have a rectal stem and refuse to talk about
> facts and prefer to talk about notions.
No, its your problem. It does not take technical terms from economists to
see item A for $1 from supplier A and item A for $2 from supplier B to
tell me how to make a decision. Its YOU who talk about "efficiency" who
are messed up; take several percent of all US jobs out of the US every
year and the buyer market here dries up. We have (fact) our population
growing at one percent per year and the number of jobs stay constant
(fact) and that means more mouths to be fed from the same number
of paychecks (and the only paychecks getting bigger is from a small slice
at the top), and all of this is a decline in standard of living here.
Why don't you Indians grow your economy by developing your own country
WITHOUT taking money from us? The US never took jobs from other countries
all through the 1500s to the present.
>>> If you had to be a fortune 500/walmart CEO, how would you deal with
>>> the situation?
>>> I would never be in that situation, any more that I'd be elected
>>> President. If I were, I'd run the company according to my
> philosophy,
>>> which I've expounded in part here over the years. That includes
>>> honest, ethical dealings and communications with employers, stock
>>> holders, customers, etc., which is why I'd never make it to CEO in
>>> 99% of companies. :-)
>>
>> If you can provide more shareholder value, you have a good chance of
>> being the CEO.
>
>> Shareholders are a very small part of the population. Jobholders are
> a
>> large part of the population.
> For every 1 castle that exists, there is one rightful owner and
> hundreds of wishful occupants on the streets.
Now, you change the subject. Above you talk about executives, then you
switch to some idea of priviledge that a king gets by telling hundreds of
people that he has all the privileges and the other hundreds have no
priviledges.
That doesn't mean the
> castle belongs more to the wishful occupants than the owner. Likewise,
> shareholders are in a minority [esp if they hold a percentage of the
> company's shares] compared to jobholders and job applicants -but they
> have a greater say in the company's functioning by way of property
> laws.
If you want to talk about the existence of _power_ all through history,
then fine. We can just have "kings" who tell everyone else they can grovel
and the "king" lives in luxury and we won't talk about wheterh he deserves
that.
>
>> There is no way you can replace a 1$ chinese product by
>> a $10 american one, and retain either the cost conscious customer base
>> or make as good a profit as walmart does currently.
>
>> In the past the Europeans have done a pretty good job at keeping OUT
> cheap
>> made in Japan products. This is a fact. I don't know what the
> situation
>> is today but their neo-cons are also thinking more about how to get
> rich
>> than being part of their society and economy.
> The US can do the same thing,
Oh, the economists would publish large volumes of propaganda and everyone
here believes "authorities"
but it comes at a price. Either the
> taxpayer subsidies the inferior/costlier products or the consumer is
> forced to buy them by law.
But, it has a stable economy.
>>> national version of the idea of the self-made man which many
> neo-cons
>>> subscribe to, especially when thinking about themselves, without
>>> admitting that they (probably) were born into a reasonably well off
>>> family which helped them get their start in life, and were helped
> all
>>> along the way by society. Of course, some of that can be said to
>>> exist for all citizens, but as it says in _Animal Farm_, some
> animals
>>> are more equal than others.
>>
>> I believe americans would be better off expecting their leaders to
>> provide more jobs, education etc.. than making a pledge to make it the
>> greatest nation on planet earth (which is what GWB does).
>
>> Quite a bit of what I hear coming out of India is to make India the
> world
>> leader in everything.
>
> The press likes to hype things up.
And, the Indian press likes it even more.
> In India,
>> people ask their leaders for more schools
>
>> If you think this is not happening here in the USA, then you don't
> know
>> anything about what people are asking their leaders here. Its in our
>> newspapers all the time. Especially as H1bs take jobs, it is
> "retrainintg"
>> that we hear. But, when corporations say they are moving the job
> overseas,
>> it always ends on _cheap labor_.
> Check out how much of the US deficit is caused by defence.
No, I'll check out how much of the deficit is because of Bush's tax cuts,
most of which went to the rich. ANd, also because of Bush's spending on
the stupid war.
The US has
> (one of?) the largest military industrial complexes in the world -and
> there is a hell lot of taxpayer money that goes into it.
I don't disagree.
>> not invade countries.
>
>> Has India never sent troops into another country?
> We have had 3 wars with Pakistan, and each time -the troops ended up
> crossing and occupying a portion of their territory. Indian troops
> have been on UN missions to a few countries. The only way India seems
> to have sent troops (albeit on a request from the govt) was to Sri
> Lanka. It was a mess -similar to Vietnam, and hasn't been repeated to
> date.
Maybe you need to read your Indian history going back farther.
> regards
> -kamal
>
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