I notice your OnLive sig. You as excited as I am about it? I hope the greedy isps will let it work without capping.
yes
I am super ready to start ONLIVE . Think I will buy a MIFI card .So I am online everywhere and all the time . I will always watch your back if we play together .
This thread is becoming like a short novel. it will need a zip code soon.
China is not the largest holder of US debt, they are in third place though. Russia and a lot of other countries, insurance agencies, mutual funds etc hold our debt.
China is not the largest holder of US debt, they are in third place though. Russia and a lot of other countries, insurance agencies, mutual funds etc hold our debt.
China may be the world's biggest polluter but thats because they have the biggest population. Per head they produce 1/3 the average American's amount of pollution.
On topic, apparently energy is much cheaper in NC than in California and its very close to the internet backbone. Also its easier to protect datacentres against hurricanes than earthquakes and wildfires apparently. At least this is what they say on macrumors.
Not really. most of the pollution is being produced in a small part of the country. Most people in China still live in the countryside, managing to live the way their grandparents did.
It's due to the industrialization of mostly southeast china by the ocean where these problems are occurring.
Other problems are happening on the northeast, where farmland is disappearing rapidly and turning into desert as the water is being pumped elsewhere.
If the government stopped using growth as a way to keep the population from demanding their stepping down, then things could be done at a more measured pace, without much of the problems. But the people in charge are mostly interested in keeping their control over the country.
We can see what their intend is from what happened back in 1989.
If the government stopped using growth as a way to keep the population from demanding their stepping down, then things could be done at a more measured pace, without much of the problems. But the people in charge are mostly interested in keeping their control over the country.
You're trivializing an extremely complex issue. The government is not pushing growth for growth's sake. China expects to have something like 75-80 million new workers entering the workforce in the next decade - that's more than half the entire employment of the US. They have to create jobs, otherwise the country could end up with a social time bomb.
Here are some facts that may interest you:
1) In the past decade, approximately 250 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in China (defined as living on less than $1 a day). That's twice the population of Japan and about 80% of the population of the US.
2) China is commonly acknowledged to be the locomotive of the economy of the East Asian region: the economies of countries like Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan will all go into a serious tailspin if China slowed down its growth.
3) Most economists would agree that the global recession would have been far worse - in fact, devastating - if China's economy had performed similarly to ours or the EU's. In fact, China has been a saving grace in the current meltdown (as they were in the 1997-98 Asia Crisis as well).
Heck, the world should be thanking China.... not the least, us, given that they financed our profligate borrowing and spending!
OK, this is too tough to resist! I will take this on, point-by-point.
Don't be such a wiseguy about you not being able to resist. Most of what you're saying is nonsense, and it's you who have to prove much of it.
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Please check out what happened with the Oroville Dam and the California earthquake in 1975. (Of course, there are some differing points of view, just as there are with Three Gorges.)
Don't back off by saying that there are different points of view. If you think that, then you shouldn't have mentioned it at all.
As to the dams in US being built before problems being known, please provide a credible cite.[/quote]
Let's talk about Oroville if you like. Possibly you just looked it up, but didn't bother to read the entire reporting.
Earthquakes in that area were known well before the dam was built. The earthquakes that occurred several years after, were more consistent, depending on the season when the lake filled up and drained. But they were no greater in size, an in fact have been getting smaller as time goes on. The largest was a 5.7, which is not very large, or destructive, unless it occurs in a city, or other heavily populated area, which this isn't in.
Until recently, the idea that dams could cause earthquakes has been controversial. While no engineer wants to build a dam where major earthquakes have occurred, esp. when they are near populated areas, building dams in areas where there hasn't been serious major earthquake activity has been where geologists have differed. Even now, that's not settled.
i've read all the articles in Science over the years about this topic, as I'm a member of the AAAS, and receive a copy every week. This is from the recent article about the China quake, which was a very major one of 7.9, which is about 120 times as great as what occurred at Oroville, which was considered to be fairly minor.
I could cite dozens of articles showing you what i've said, but there's no point. These two give a good idea.
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You have to look at the cumulative coal use impact, that has happened over a whole century in the case of the US (since GHGs, for instance, stay in the atmosphere for centuries). This compares to perhaps a couple of decades for China. It will be a looooong time before China emits more than the US cumulatively.
You haven't paid attention to what I wrote. I said that in the past, we didn't know of these things. It's not possible to go back 100 years or more, and tell people what will happen. Even in the 1980's this was not etablished, though they were getting an idea of its impact.
China is ALREADY producing more carbon emissions than the US. Please get your facts correct before making things up.
It was expected that China would exceed our emissions in a couple of years, but they began to a year ago, which surprised scientists.
Despite what you're saying, China is building far more small highly polluting coal plants that it is building clean plants. Its clean plants seem to be more for the point of publicity than a matter of practical use. It's even questioned as to how clean many of those plants really are, as there are no standards they are being built to that are recognized. Foreign scientific observers are not invited.
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It's about the incremental investments: At least, China is going ahead with clean coal; unfortunately, it's still at the level of cheap talk in the US. When the US can match China in terms of its incremental clean-energy investments, let's talk.
I wish it was true about China, but it's not.
We've stopped severalcoalplants here in the Us the past couple of years, and we're spending big bucks to work around it. The Crbon emissions of the US have slowed down for the past decade, and are hoped to be slowing down further.
Meanwhile China's emissions are growing at the highest rate of any country.
What is amusing, is that in several reports, China tries to blame foreign countries for China's emissions. hat's a joke! China is in control of whatever occurs within its borders. If they weren't so concerned in getting as much manufacturing and foreign investment as possible, they could easily have made, and enforced laws on pollution and emissions.
What's even more interesting is that it's China's own government owned, and private industries, that have the most polluting plants and mines. They can only blame themselves. Much of this is due to corruption of local officials who ignore national rulings. Interestingly enough, it's the national government that reward these same local officials for increasing production as much as possible, while they look the other way on violations of pollution and safety laws, which is why China has, by far, the most deaths in mining accidents that anywhere else in the world.
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That is an untenably sweeping, and silly statement. And you know it. I suppose all those Nobel prizes handed out annually must be nonsense.
I couldn't care less about all the nobel Prises given out in economics. None of them mean anything. Economics isn't a science, and it's not even clear if it's worthy of a nobel Prize in the first place.
It was only recently that a Nobel Prize was given out to two economists for the obvious (and something I've been saying publicly for decades, here included) fact that people don't make economic decisions rationally. Before that, every economic theory had assumed that decisions were rational. Sheesh!
But do they teach this yet? No, they don't, because most economists still don't agree with it! Idiots!!!
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So how did we get to where we are today? As an autarkic economy? No way. Our being open to trade, labor via immigration (legal), capital (via the most open capital markets), the best ideas from anywhere in the world (e.g., the Einsteins and the von Brauns) -- i.e., being in open economy -- is how we become economically great.
I see you looked up another word. Good for you!
Throughout mot of our history, trade was a much smaller component of our economy that it has become during the latter part of the 20th century.
While I've stated on these forums in another thread, that one of the reasons why the Great Depression sustained itself for so long was that international trade had shut down. That's true.
But, even so, Roosevelt's initial economic plan was working. He increased government spending a great deal, and cut some taxes to business and to middle class people. The economy was coming back. But in 1935, the fear of the expanding deficit caused him to reverse much of that and so he increased taxes and cut spending. The recovery reversed itself as well.
Yet, foreign trade was a much smaller part of out economy that it became after WWII.
Nevertheless, when countries that are about equal trade, the imbalances are small, and so a "free trade" situation can almost occur. When the balance strongly favors one side, it can't. The idea that cheap goods benefit the US and other industrialized countries is a surface phenomenon.
What isn't being taken into account is the destruction of industry, thee jobs there, the training for those jobs, and the reverberatory effects throughout the rest of the economy. That takes a while to see, and so those who favor this unequal trade only see the benefits such as low inflation, for the decade or so before the more devastating effects become pronounced.
This is what we're seeing now. Entire industries have moved to China.
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Yeah, this point will resonate if/when the average American pollutes/emits as much as an average Chinese or Indian person. For instance, do you know that the average American emits six times as much GHGs as an average Chinese person, and 20 times as much as an average Indian? What gives you the right to say that Chinese can't, per person, emit as much GHGs as we do?
"There may not be a later?" OK. If you feel strongly (and are truly worried about) about that, would you be willing to take a few thousand dollars out of your paycheck and hand it over to a Chinese person so that they don't have to produce all that extra gunk that has you worried?
This is not an intelligent response from you, and you know it. Even throughout the Bush years, the US has been doing a great deal to mitigate its carbon footprint. For decades before that, even before this was understood to be a problem, we spent tens of billions to clean up lakes, rivers, and large tracts of land that were polluted in a time when pollution was not understood to be much of a threat, when the science was not there.
Don't pretend we haven't been doing anything, because that just shows ignorance on your part about this issue, or a deliberate attempt to ignore what has been done, and what is being done.
This current administration has reversed many of the Bush years' policies, and you should acknowledge that, which you seem to be reluctant to do for some reason. Perhaps YOU have some axe to grind?
As far as that one fifth or one sixth, what does that show? All it shows it that it's quite amazing that china already out pollutes us by a wide margin, and will continue to do so at a vastly greater rate. Most of that pollution, as I've already pointed out is from a smaller part of the country, and doesn't have anything to do with perhaps 800 million people who live there. When you look at how the pollution is concentrated in their country, you will see that per capita, it's not that much less than ours, considering that most of their country is lightly industrialized so far.
Of course, other environmental disasters are occurring all over the country. The Yellow River is becoming hopelessly polluted, as are other major waterways because there are no standards for run offs from farm areas, mining operations, power plants, and factories. In Bejing, as well as other major cities, people wear masks much of the time because of the "yellow air" You may remember how The government closed down power plants mines and factories around Bejing for the olympics. The athletes still complained about the poor quality of the air.
So that's supposed to be ok from your point of view? Go to it!
Very shortsighted on your part. You don't seem to understand the issue at all. Perhaps you are one of those who don't understand how much of a problem we're going to be in later this century, so you can think it's ok for China, India and others to ratchet up their pollution?
According to you, it's only fair!
It won't be long befor China puts out twice the carbon the US does, while ours is slowing down. What then?
It isn't a matter of a naive statement that we should pay them to do it. They have a trillion in foreign reserves, they can afford to do it themselves, though they don't want to, because they're afraid it will slow their growth, which is all they care about.
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O/w, it is just the typical (and tired) arrogance and shallowness of "do as we say, not as we do."
Again, thats nonsense. You're disregarding every fact to make a statement that's not even close to being true.
Just like your statements about dams, read something first.
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When the US is ready and willing to internalize the cost of all the externalities it imposes, let's talk again. Perhaps we could start with the GHG footprint.....
Wow! What a convoluted statement!
So it's our fault that others don't want to do for themselves, even when they can afford to do so.
What does the fact that this is a rumour site have anything to do with it? In this case, the error renders the headline meaningless. I agree it's pointless to point out mistakes made in forum posts but surely the writers of a site should aspire to be understood in their headlines?
I'm well aware of the number of international users of forums like these and they often express themselves better in English than many native-English speakers, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ask for headlines that make sense in a basic grammatical sense. Actually, I expect those people using English as a second language would insist that English is used well by the native English speaking writers of the stories, because they'd want to learn correct English.
Non-native speakers of any language will always be allowed some leeway, but English sites using pidgin English look amateurish and, in my opinion, the authority and veracity of their content is diminished (whether it's a rumour site or the New York Times doing the mangling).
edit: By way of illustration, here's a headline from further down the page with the equivalent words also missing:
iPhone rumored wireless movie, TV downloads
Nonsensical, isn't it?
Oh, I see your point now. I lost sleep all night over the poor use of the English language in the posting.
It's a rumor site. People make mistakes. It is not the end of the world. If it really means that much to you and you can't resist pointing out every error you see to make yourself feel better. I'd stay out of forums and get a good internet dictionary and read it to pass the time.
I happen to have a little more faith in myself (and in others) than you seem to.
If you really think everyone is so intellectually corrupt that their understanding of right and wrong hinges only on whether they are impacted negatively by it, you must be tremendously paranoid of the guy standing behind you on the subway platform.
I only believe trade is good for both parties as long as I don't lose my job because of it.
I only believe that murder is wrong until I'm in the defendant's chair.
I'm not quite sure of what you're trying to say here.
But I can turn that around for you. are you so naive to think that people don't place their own welfare above others?
Do you think that when people anywhere go to the polls, they don't vote for whomever they think will bring the greatest benefits back to them?
Do you really believe that most people are so altruistic?
Because they're not.
I'm not interested in being politically correct. Perhaps you are.
I've often said that in 50 years, more or less, China, and perhaps India as well, will be at an equal level with everyone else. When that happens, manufacturing, and other trade will equalize. it will have to.
But until then, we will see great inequalities in that area.
If you think that it's "ok" now, then you're not looking at the whole picture.
You're trivializing an extremely complex issue. The government is not pushing growth for growth's sake. China expects to have something like 75-80 million new workers entering the workforce in the next decade - that's more than half the entire employment of the US. They have to create jobs, otherwise the country could end up with a social time bomb.
Here are some facts that may interest you:
1) In the past decade, approximately 250 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in China (defined as living on less than $1 a day). That's twice the population of Japan and about 80% of the population of the US.
2) China is commonly acknowledged to be the locomotive of the economy of the East Asian region: the economies of countries like Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan will all go into a serious tailspin if China slowed down its growth.
3) Most economists would agree that the global recession would have been far worse - in fact, devastating - if China's economy had performed similarly to ours or the EU's. In fact, China has been a saving grace in the current meltdown (as they were in the 1997-98 Asia Crisis as well).
Heck, the world should be thanking China.... not the least, us, given that they financed our profligate borrowing and spending!
I'm not trivializing it, and you're wrong. Deng stated that China needed 'untrammeled" growth. You should know this.
A good article of Deng's concepts and how that's evolving;
Oh, I see your point now. I lost sleep all night over the poor use of the English language in the posting.
It's a rumor site. People make mistakes. It is not the end of the world. If it really means that much to you and you can't resist pointing out every error you see to make yourself feel better. I'd stay out of forums and get a good internet dictionary and read it to pass the time.
I'm not sure why you're trying to belittle me with sarcasm. I already agreed that pedantry over the content of people's posts on a forum is pointless. But I do like to be able to read a sentence written by the editors of site itself and understand what's being said without having to re-read it to get the gist. Sorry about that.
There are 11 nuclear power plants in North and South Carolina. Two are in the same county as one of these possible sites. There are coal fired plants too.
You 100% correct. In fact, NC has three facilities and the closest one is 17 miles north of Charlotte, NC, which is about 100 miles east of the proposed server sites.
Wow. For someone who's not particularly adept at the basics of economics -- for instance, you think the word "externalities" is convoluted -- you sure are pretty arrogant ("all economists are idiots")!
It's somewhat laughable that you should be calling others "wiseguy."
There are so many inconsistencies, unsubstaniated claims, and contradictions, and so much shrill name-calling in your diatribe that I honestly don't know where to begin. Frankly, it will take too long to respond. So let me give you some broad responses to hopefully get you think a little bit about how you come through in this forum. (Although it's probably wasted, since you appear to be the type of person that is not very good at taking feedback, or being called on his shallowness. It is fairly obvious that you have a pretty high opinion of yourself and your ability to pontificate on all matters from earthquakes to environment to economics).
1) You've said many a time on this forum that you've been a happy AAPL shareholder because you bought a lot when the stock was in the low teens years ago and held. You surely know that Apple's stock price has done so well, in major part, because of its high margins. Its margins are so high, in major part, because it has been able to keep the costs of its components and assembly down.
Let me ask you to reflect: Why do you think Apple has been able to do that? Does China have something to do with it? Indeed, what does China's pollution and environmental degradation and its imposition of global externalities (there's that word again: look it up, you may actualy learn something) have to do with wealth creation in portfolios such as yours? Are you willing to give that back? Of course not. "It's already happened."
I hear talk like yours all the time, esp. from the left of the political spectrum. It's well-intentioned but hypocritical. The people who complain the loudest about China are those who have benefitted from it mightily as consumers and shareholders, and yet have no clue that they have.
To paraphrase that old cliche, "we've seen the problem, and it is us."
2) Your general point is that the US can't go back and change things from the past 100 years, while China etc can, going forward. Well, there one thing that is fundamentally problematic wih that. It assumes that people who caused prior problems have no responsibility to help deal with or clean up its consequences. That's no different from saying that the Catholic church can't change what's happened with its priests, or Europe with its National Socialist parties and sundry fascists, so just suck it up and move on.
No, we have to deal with these head on, because we have to change future behavior.
The behavior that I am talking about changing is - if we'd like China to put a lid on its economic activity going forward or achieve its growth in cleaner ways - reducing our own pollution and emissions to Chinese levels. Unthinkable, right? So is it for the Chinese to not contemplate growth.
As long as the average American emits 20 tons of CO2 per year (to China's 5 tons or India's 1 ton; Source: US Energy Inofrmation Administration, www.eia.gov), what we have is a problem going forward to the next 100 years.
3) Yes, the US has done a lot in the past couple of decades. Although the Clean Air Act and other similar legislation is from the early 60s, it was not until the major revision in 1990, or about 100 years after the beginning of the US economic miracle - which, btw, ended up denuding our land and forests, and polluting our air and waters - that we began to course-correct. For instance, people don't realize that pristine (today) Northern New England was practically a forest wasteland and its waters were highly toxic and polluted through the first half of the 20th century: It is only in the past few decades, i.e., decades after it all started, that it has become what it is today. Think, for instance, about how long the problems with GE and the Hudson festered before the dredging actually began this year!
4) That brings me to the politics of it all. I'll ignore your swipes (well, fwiw, I think highly of Obama, and have no particular AXE to grind, but that's irrelevant). He's appointed some very good people to his administration, and the intentions are all very good, but right now the US is all political vaporware on these issues. Everything is talk (including what the EPA has said so far, or the Democraticaly controlled Congress). We should wait to see what is actually accomplished before popping champagne corks. My guess is, even when we do, we'll get something along the lines of what we've seen with Gitmo and warrantless wiretapping and miltary tribunals and such: political reality trumps grand pronouncements.
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Originally Posted by melgross
Don't be such a wiseguy about you not being able to resist. Most of what you're saying is nonsense, and it's you who have to prove much of it.
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(SNIP)
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Wow! What a convoluted statement!
So it's our fault that others don't want to do for themselves, even when they can afford to do so.
This has little if ANY relevance to the topic and hand.
I come here hoping to see a decent, reasonable and mature response to the topic of what could Apple be building such a large server farm for. Instead we get Anantksundaram and Melgross at each other's throats about who has the best economic theory.
I come here hoping to see a decent, reasonable and mature response to the topic of what could Apple be building such a large server farm for. Instead we get Anantksundaram and Melgross at each other's throats......
You're absolutely right. It's my fault: I should know that there's no point in starting an argument with, or contradicting melgross, since it will not end.
I'll stop.
(Of course, I am not making any promises about future threads! )
Wow. For someone who's not particularly adept at the basics of economics -- for instance, you think the word "externalities" is convoluted -- you sure are pretty arrogant ("all economists are idiots")!
I know a lot more about economics than you do, my friend. If you could show just one or two major situations when economists were able to make correct predictions of what was going to happen over a period of time, I might have more respect for their theories. The concept is "predictive validity". They sure can explain what already happened, though even there, most disagree with other.
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It's somewhat laughable that you should be calling others "wiseguy."
I respond to other the way they respond to me. You started to belittle my statements, so I returned the complement.
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There are so many inconsistencies, unsubstaniated claims, and contradictions, and so much shrill name-calling in your diatribe that I honestly don't know where to begin. Franky, it will take too long to respond. So let me give you some broad responses to hopefully get you think a little bit about how you come through in this forum. (Although it's probably wasted, since you appear to be the type of person that is not very good at taking feedback, or being called on his shallowness. It is fairly obvious that you have a pretty high opinion of yourself and your ability to pontificate on all matters from earthquakes to environment to economics).
You haven't pointed out a single one, and I've at least given links to show some of mine.
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1) You've said many a time on this forum that you've been a happy AAPL shareholder because you bought a lot when the stock was in the low teens years ago and held. You surely know that Apple's stock price has done so well, in major part, because of its high margins. Its margins are so high, in major part, because it has been able to keep the costs of its components and assembly down.
Let me ask you to reflect: Why do you think Apple has been able to do that? Does China have something to do with it? Indeed, what does China's pollution and environmental degradation and its imposition of global externalities (there's that word again: look it up, you may actualy learn something) have to do with wealth creation in portfolios such as yours? Are you willing to give that back? Of course not. "It's already happened."
This is another shortsighted remark you're making.
When most of the worlds computers were made in the US, and we were the largest exported of computers, profits from companies making them were pretty damn good as well. It's true that prices were higher, but people were used to paying higher prices for most things then.
The fact that Apple, as others, makes their products in Asia, doesn't give them any advantage over any other manufacturer, because they ALL make their computers there.
I don't know why you only see what you want to. Do you really think that Apple has good margins because they make products there, and that other computer manufacturers, for the most part, don't, because they make their computers?where, exactly?
You're trying to convolve more than one thing, when they have little to p with each other. What does this have to do with my portfolio, or you're contention that I should give some of it back?
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I hear talk like yours all the time, esp. from the left of the political spectrum. It's well-intentioned but hypocritical. The people who complain the loudest about China are those who have benefitted from it mightily as consumers and shareholders, and yet have no clue that they have.
What is that supposed to mean? "Talk like mine"? That's ridiculous!
I know exactly what's going on. I also know what I have, and why. Mybe you'r jealous about that, but it's not my fault.
I invest in Apple for the same reasons why we buy their products. Because they are well designed, work well, and the software is what we think of as the best. I think that it gives the company a good future.
It has nothing to do with where it's produced. I often defend China against those who constantly disparage their industry. But as everyone is producing there (or Taiwan), there is no advantage for Apple to be doing the same, just the chance to not fall behind in cost.
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To paraphrase that old cliche, "we've seen the problem, and it is us."
Surely, you don't think I believe that we're perfect? You've been here long enough to have read my criticsms as well.
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2) Your general point is that the US can't go back and change things from the past 100 years, while China etc can, going forward. Well, there one thing that is fundamentally problematic wih that. It assumes that people who caused prior problems have no responsibility to help deal with or clean up its consequences. That's no different from saying that the Catholic church can't change what's happened with its priests, or Europe with its National Socilaist parties and sundry fascists, so just suck it up and move on.
If China was in a state where they had no control over their own fate, then i would entirely agree with you. But as thats not true, I can't agree.
If China made the proper laws, and enforced them properly, it would affect EVERY company in the country. It would affect their own, as well as the foreign ones operating their, and the ones making goods for the foreign ones.
This would raise costs for everyone, INCLUDING our companies doing business there. Therefor, we WOULD be paying for it, by having the goods we purchase from them costing more.
But for whatever reason, you seem to be ignoring the fact that their growth is phenominal. Their profits are also. Their balance of trade is th greatest in the world, surpassing Japans. They can afford to do whatever they need to do. They just choose not to.
You really aren't addressing what I'm saying, just making general statements in disagreement.
Another thing you're ignoring, is that many countries who have had terrible dictatorships have done that very thing, allowing past injustices to go unpunished, after acknowledging their actuality. Look to Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and others.
So what do you want to do? go back to the past? We deal with what is here now.
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No, we have to deal with these head on, because we have to change future behavior.
You say no, but you are really saying the same thing I am.
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The behavior that I am talking about changing is - if we'd like China to put a lid on its economic activity going forward or achieve its growth in cleaner ways - reducing our own pollution and emissions to Chinese levels. Unthinkable, right? So is it for the Chinese to not contemplate growth.
But you're not making a logical argument. The Chinese are increasing their pollution at a fantastic rate. Technology only allows us to do what we can to lower ours. We are far more industrialized than they are yet. But our industry is polluting much less than theirs is. We admit high carbon emissions, it's true, but our rate has slowed down, we ARE working on it. But theirs has passed ours, and it looks as though theirs will continue to increase at very high rates for the foreseeable future. And yet again, you refuse to admit that policies on the national level here have changed.
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As long as the average American emits 20 tons of CO2 per year (to China's 5 tons or India's 1 ton), what we have is a problem going forward to the next 100 years.
Our numbers have leveled off, and in many industries have been going down. But theirs is rising at very rapid rates. Their absolute numbers in China are higher than ours already. I wouldn't be surprised if their per capita rates pass ours either.
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3) Yes, the US has done a lot in the past couple of decades. Although the Clean Air Act and other similar legislation is from the early 60s, it was not until the major revision in 1990, or about 100 years after the beginning of the US economic miracle - which, btw, ended up denuding our land and forests, and polluting our air and waters - that we began to course-correct. For instance, people don't realize that pristine (today) Northern New England was practically a forest wasteland and its waters were highly toxic and polluted through the first half of the 20th century: It is only in the past few decades, i.e., decades after it all started, that it has become what it is today. Think, for instance, about how long the problems with GE and the Hudson festered before the dredging actually began this year!
A agree with that. no argument there. no one thought about this 100 years ago. Only after we realized what was happening did we work to roll these problems back. for the past three decades, forests have been growing back at rates that about equal the rates they were being cut. and populated. Our rivers have been cleaned up immensely, though there's still work to be done. We still have problems with strip mining. There's legislation to minimize that, and mist mining has to include re-forestation afterwards. This is one of our biggest problems, but it's very minor when compared to what's going on over there.
We also have laws here, so things must go through the courts. They don't have that there.
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4) That brings me to the politics of it all. I'll ignore your swipes (well, fwiw, I think highly of Obama, and have no particular AXE to grind, but that's irrelevant). He's appointed some very good people to his administration, and the intentions are all very good, but right now the US is all political vaporware on these issues. Everything is talk (including what the EPA has said so far, or the Democraticaly controlled Congress). We should wait to see what is actually accomplished before popping champagne corks. My guess is, even when we do, we'll get something along the lines of what we've seen with Gitmo and warrantless wiretapping: poliitcal reality trumps grand pronouncements.
Well, it's good that you've finally said something about that.
I don't expect miracles. I do expect more progress. we've already come a long way, despite the foot dragging of the Bush administration.
And understand that I'm a strong environmentalist. I contribute a good amount to my organizations every year. I fought against the loosening of the laws that administration was attempting.
My argument here is that it's very difficult to change course in the middle, but it's much easier to go in the right direction from the beginning. It also costs far less to do it right from the beginning, than have to clean it up later, after much has already been lost forever.
It wouldn't have slowed Chinas growth much to have started out right, but they chose not to. We've had to turn the ship around, which is always much harder to do, as people bcome set in their ways.
Nevertheless, it's turning.
You can't blame us forwhat's happening there.
You also can't expect us to give up most of what we fought for over 200 years. It ain't gonna happen, and truthfully, you wouldn't want it to happen.
And if you stop disparaging me, I'll stop disparaging you.
Comments
I'm in . Surfing the clouds looking for a game to play .
<<<<ride>>>> !!
I notice your OnLive sig. You as excited as I am about it? I hope the greedy isps will let it work without capping.
I notice your OnLive sig. You as excited as I am about it? I hope the greedy isps will let it work without capping.
yes
I am super ready to start ONLIVE . Think I will buy a MIFI card .So I am online everywhere and all the time . I will always watch your back if we play together .
This thread is becoming like a short novel. it will need a zip code soon.
i now believe the server farm is exclusively intended to provide 3d architectural rendering power for the design of steve's new house.
and we have a winner!!!!11!!
:d:d:d
See here for who is in first place...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29880401/?slide=16
shocking, isn't it?
China is not the largest holder of US debt, they are in third place though. Russia and a lot of other countries, insurance agencies, mutual funds etc hold our debt.
See here for who is in first place...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29880401/?slide=16
shocking, isn't it?
so ... we could in effect walk away from all this debt
let the commies figure that one out
China may be the world's biggest polluter but thats because they have the biggest population. Per head they produce 1/3 the average American's amount of pollution.
On topic, apparently energy is much cheaper in NC than in California and its very close to the internet backbone. Also its easier to protect datacentres against hurricanes than earthquakes and wildfires apparently. At least this is what they say on macrumors.
Not really. most of the pollution is being produced in a small part of the country. Most people in China still live in the countryside, managing to live the way their grandparents did.
It's due to the industrialization of mostly southeast china by the ocean where these problems are occurring.
Other problems are happening on the northeast, where farmland is disappearing rapidly and turning into desert as the water is being pumped elsewhere.
If the government stopped using growth as a way to keep the population from demanding their stepping down, then things could be done at a more measured pace, without much of the problems. But the people in charge are mostly interested in keeping their control over the country.
We can see what their intend is from what happened back in 1989.
Nothings changed.
If the government stopped using growth as a way to keep the population from demanding their stepping down, then things could be done at a more measured pace, without much of the problems. But the people in charge are mostly interested in keeping their control over the country.
You're trivializing an extremely complex issue. The government is not pushing growth for growth's sake. China expects to have something like 75-80 million new workers entering the workforce in the next decade - that's more than half the entire employment of the US. They have to create jobs, otherwise the country could end up with a social time bomb.
Here are some facts that may interest you:
1) In the past decade, approximately 250 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in China (defined as living on less than $1 a day). That's twice the population of Japan and about 80% of the population of the US.
2) China is commonly acknowledged to be the locomotive of the economy of the East Asian region: the economies of countries like Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan will all go into a serious tailspin if China slowed down its growth.
3) Most economists would agree that the global recession would have been far worse - in fact, devastating - if China's economy had performed similarly to ours or the EU's. In fact, China has been a saving grace in the current meltdown (as they were in the 1997-98 Asia Crisis as well).
Heck, the world should be thanking China.... not the least, us, given that they financed our profligate borrowing and spending!
OK, this is too tough to resist!
Don't be such a wiseguy about you not being able to resist. Most of what you're saying is nonsense, and it's you who have to prove much of it.
Please check out what happened with the Oroville Dam and the California earthquake in 1975. (Of course, there are some differing points of view, just as there are with Three Gorges.)
Don't back off by saying that there are different points of view. If you think that, then you shouldn't have mentioned it at all.
As to the dams in US being built before problems being known, please provide a credible cite.[/quote]
Let's talk about Oroville if you like. Possibly you just looked it up, but didn't bother to read the entire reporting.
Earthquakes in that area were known well before the dam was built. The earthquakes that occurred several years after, were more consistent, depending on the season when the lake filled up and drained. But they were no greater in size, an in fact have been getting smaller as time goes on. The largest was a 5.7, which is not very large, or destructive, unless it occurs in a city, or other heavily populated area, which this isn't in.
Until recently, the idea that dams could cause earthquakes has been controversial. While no engineer wants to build a dam where major earthquakes have occurred, esp. when they are near populated areas, building dams in areas where there hasn't been serious major earthquake activity has been where geologists have differed. Even now, that's not settled.
http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl1627/16270870.htm
i've read all the articles in Science over the years about this topic, as I'm a member of the AAAS, and receive a copy every week. This is from the recent article about the China quake, which was a very major one of 7.9, which is about 120 times as great as what occurred at Oroville, which was considered to be fairly minor.
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/scie...d-earthquakes/
I could cite dozens of articles showing you what i've said, but there's no point. These two give a good idea.
You have to look at the cumulative coal use impact, that has happened over a whole century in the case of the US (since GHGs, for instance, stay in the atmosphere for centuries). This compares to perhaps a couple of decades for China. It will be a looooong time before China emits more than the US cumulatively.
You haven't paid attention to what I wrote. I said that in the past, we didn't know of these things. It's not possible to go back 100 years or more, and tell people what will happen. Even in the 1980's this was not etablished, though they were getting an idea of its impact.
China is ALREADY producing more carbon emissions than the US. Please get your facts correct before making things up.
It was expected that China would exceed our emissions in a couple of years, but they began to a year ago, which surprised scientists.
Despite what you're saying, China is building far more small highly polluting coal plants that it is building clean plants. Its clean plants seem to be more for the point of publicity than a matter of practical use. It's even questioned as to how clean many of those plants really are, as there are no standards they are being built to that are recognized. Foreign scientific observers are not invited.
It's about the incremental investments: At least, China is going ahead with clean coal; unfortunately, it's still at the level of cheap talk in the US. When the US can match China in terms of its incremental clean-energy investments, let's talk.
I wish it was true about China, but it's not.
We've stopped severalcoalplants here in the Us the past couple of years, and we're spending big bucks to work around it. The Crbon emissions of the US have slowed down for the past decade, and are hoped to be slowing down further.
Meanwhile China's emissions are growing at the highest rate of any country.
http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/110
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/003957.html
What is amusing, is that in several reports, China tries to blame foreign countries for China's emissions. hat's a joke! China is in control of whatever occurs within its borders. If they weren't so concerned in getting as much manufacturing and foreign investment as possible, they could easily have made, and enforced laws on pollution and emissions.
What's even more interesting is that it's China's own government owned, and private industries, that have the most polluting plants and mines. They can only blame themselves. Much of this is due to corruption of local officials who ignore national rulings. Interestingly enough, it's the national government that reward these same local officials for increasing production as much as possible, while they look the other way on violations of pollution and safety laws, which is why China has, by far, the most deaths in mining accidents that anywhere else in the world.
That is an untenably sweeping, and silly statement. And you know it. I suppose all those Nobel prizes handed out annually must be nonsense.
I couldn't care less about all the nobel Prises given out in economics. None of them mean anything. Economics isn't a science, and it's not even clear if it's worthy of a nobel Prize in the first place.
It was only recently that a Nobel Prize was given out to two economists for the obvious (and something I've been saying publicly for decades, here included) fact that people don't make economic decisions rationally. Before that, every economic theory had assumed that decisions were rational. Sheesh!
But do they teach this yet? No, they don't, because most economists still don't agree with it! Idiots!!!
So how did we get to where we are today? As an autarkic economy? No way. Our being open to trade, labor via immigration (legal), capital (via the most open capital markets), the best ideas from anywhere in the world (e.g., the Einsteins and the von Brauns) -- i.e., being in open economy -- is how we become economically great.
I see you looked up another word. Good for you!
Throughout mot of our history, trade was a much smaller component of our economy that it has become during the latter part of the 20th century.
While I've stated on these forums in another thread, that one of the reasons why the Great Depression sustained itself for so long was that international trade had shut down. That's true.
But, even so, Roosevelt's initial economic plan was working. He increased government spending a great deal, and cut some taxes to business and to middle class people. The economy was coming back. But in 1935, the fear of the expanding deficit caused him to reverse much of that and so he increased taxes and cut spending. The recovery reversed itself as well.
Yet, foreign trade was a much smaller part of out economy that it became after WWII.
Nevertheless, when countries that are about equal trade, the imbalances are small, and so a "free trade" situation can almost occur. When the balance strongly favors one side, it can't. The idea that cheap goods benefit the US and other industrialized countries is a surface phenomenon.
What isn't being taken into account is the destruction of industry, thee jobs there, the training for those jobs, and the reverberatory effects throughout the rest of the economy. That takes a while to see, and so those who favor this unequal trade only see the benefits such as low inflation, for the decade or so before the more devastating effects become pronounced.
This is what we're seeing now. Entire industries have moved to China.
Yeah, this point will resonate if/when the average American pollutes/emits as much as an average Chinese or Indian person. For instance, do you know that the average American emits six times as much GHGs as an average Chinese person, and 20 times as much as an average Indian? What gives you the right to say that Chinese can't, per person, emit as much GHGs as we do?
"There may not be a later?" OK. If you feel strongly (and are truly worried about) about that, would you be willing to take a few thousand dollars out of your paycheck and hand it over to a Chinese person so that they don't have to produce all that extra gunk that has you worried?
This is not an intelligent response from you, and you know it. Even throughout the Bush years, the US has been doing a great deal to mitigate its carbon footprint. For decades before that, even before this was understood to be a problem, we spent tens of billions to clean up lakes, rivers, and large tracts of land that were polluted in a time when pollution was not understood to be much of a threat, when the science was not there.
Don't pretend we haven't been doing anything, because that just shows ignorance on your part about this issue, or a deliberate attempt to ignore what has been done, and what is being done.
This current administration has reversed many of the Bush years' policies, and you should acknowledge that, which you seem to be reluctant to do for some reason. Perhaps YOU have some axe to grind?
As far as that one fifth or one sixth, what does that show? All it shows it that it's quite amazing that china already out pollutes us by a wide margin, and will continue to do so at a vastly greater rate. Most of that pollution, as I've already pointed out is from a smaller part of the country, and doesn't have anything to do with perhaps 800 million people who live there. When you look at how the pollution is concentrated in their country, you will see that per capita, it's not that much less than ours, considering that most of their country is lightly industrialized so far.
Of course, other environmental disasters are occurring all over the country. The Yellow River is becoming hopelessly polluted, as are other major waterways because there are no standards for run offs from farm areas, mining operations, power plants, and factories. In Bejing, as well as other major cities, people wear masks much of the time because of the "yellow air" You may remember how The government closed down power plants mines and factories around Bejing for the olympics. The athletes still complained about the poor quality of the air.
So that's supposed to be ok from your point of view? Go to it!
Very shortsighted on your part. You don't seem to understand the issue at all. Perhaps you are one of those who don't understand how much of a problem we're going to be in later this century, so you can think it's ok for China, India and others to ratchet up their pollution?
According to you, it's only fair!
It won't be long befor China puts out twice the carbon the US does, while ours is slowing down. What then?
It isn't a matter of a naive statement that we should pay them to do it. They have a trillion in foreign reserves, they can afford to do it themselves, though they don't want to, because they're afraid it will slow their growth, which is all they care about.
O/w, it is just the typical (and tired) arrogance and shallowness of "do as we say, not as we do."
Again, thats nonsense. You're disregarding every fact to make a statement that's not even close to being true.
Just like your statements about dams, read something first.
When the US is ready and willing to internalize the cost of all the externalities it imposes, let's talk again. Perhaps we could start with the GHG footprint.....
Wow! What a convoluted statement!
So it's our fault that others don't want to do for themselves, even when they can afford to do so.
Sure, happy to have you include India. As long you can stick to facts (or opinions based on facts).
I've stuck to facts. You're the one making unsupported statements.
You seem to be interested in being politically correct than factually correct.
What does the fact that this is a rumour site have anything to do with it? In this case, the error renders the headline meaningless. I agree it's pointless to point out mistakes made in forum posts but surely the writers of a site should aspire to be understood in their headlines?
I'm well aware of the number of international users of forums like these and they often express themselves better in English than many native-English speakers, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ask for headlines that make sense in a basic grammatical sense. Actually, I expect those people using English as a second language would insist that English is used well by the native English speaking writers of the stories, because they'd want to learn correct English.
Non-native speakers of any language will always be allowed some leeway, but English sites using pidgin English look amateurish and, in my opinion, the authority and veracity of their content is diminished (whether it's a rumour site or the New York Times doing the mangling).
edit: By way of illustration, here's a headline from further down the page with the equivalent words also missing:
iPhone rumored wireless movie, TV downloads
Nonsensical, isn't it?
Oh, I see your point now. I lost sleep all night over the poor use of the English language in the posting.
It's a rumor site. People make mistakes. It is not the end of the world. If it really means that much to you and you can't resist pointing out every error you see to make yourself feel better. I'd stay out of forums and get a good internet dictionary and read it to pass the time.
I happen to have a little more faith in myself (and in others) than you seem to.
If you really think everyone is so intellectually corrupt that their understanding of right and wrong hinges only on whether they are impacted negatively by it, you must be tremendously paranoid of the guy standing behind you on the subway platform.
I only believe trade is good for both parties as long as I don't lose my job because of it.
I only believe that murder is wrong until I'm in the defendant's chair.
I'm not quite sure of what you're trying to say here.
But I can turn that around for you. are you so naive to think that people don't place their own welfare above others?
Do you think that when people anywhere go to the polls, they don't vote for whomever they think will bring the greatest benefits back to them?
Do you really believe that most people are so altruistic?
Because they're not.
I'm not interested in being politically correct. Perhaps you are.
I've often said that in 50 years, more or less, China, and perhaps India as well, will be at an equal level with everyone else. When that happens, manufacturing, and other trade will equalize. it will have to.
But until then, we will see great inequalities in that area.
If you think that it's "ok" now, then you're not looking at the whole picture.
You're trivializing an extremely complex issue. The government is not pushing growth for growth's sake. China expects to have something like 75-80 million new workers entering the workforce in the next decade - that's more than half the entire employment of the US. They have to create jobs, otherwise the country could end up with a social time bomb.
Here are some facts that may interest you:
1) In the past decade, approximately 250 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in China (defined as living on less than $1 a day). That's twice the population of Japan and about 80% of the population of the US.
2) China is commonly acknowledged to be the locomotive of the economy of the East Asian region: the economies of countries like Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan will all go into a serious tailspin if China slowed down its growth.
3) Most economists would agree that the global recession would have been far worse - in fact, devastating - if China's economy had performed similarly to ours or the EU's. In fact, China has been a saving grace in the current meltdown (as they were in the 1997-98 Asia Crisis as well).
Heck, the world should be thanking China.... not the least, us, given that they financed our profligate borrowing and spending!
I'm not trivializing it, and you're wrong. Deng stated that China needed 'untrammeled" growth. You should know this.
A good article of Deng's concepts and how that's evolving;
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php...d=2&subcatid=7
A more recent view of how even that is being perverted;
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...rs/deng-undone
Oh, I see your point now. I lost sleep all night over the poor use of the English language in the posting.
It's a rumor site. People make mistakes. It is not the end of the world. If it really means that much to you and you can't resist pointing out every error you see to make yourself feel better. I'd stay out of forums and get a good internet dictionary and read it to pass the time.
I'm not sure why you're trying to belittle me with sarcasm. I already agreed that pedantry over the content of people's posts on a forum is pointless. But I do like to be able to read a sentence written by the editors of site itself and understand what's being said without having to re-read it to get the gist. Sorry about that.
Here is a link to an artical on a Microsoft DC in Texas. If you need a big center, $500m goes fast.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=208403723
Apple has a DC in the bay area now.
There are 11 nuclear power plants in North and South Carolina. Two are in the same county as one of these possible sites. There are coal fired plants too.
You 100% correct. In fact, NC has three facilities and the closest one is 17 miles north of Charlotte, NC, which is about 100 miles east of the proposed server sites.
It's somewhat laughable that you should be calling others "wiseguy."
There are so many inconsistencies, unsubstaniated claims, and contradictions, and so much shrill name-calling in your diatribe that I honestly don't know where to begin. Frankly, it will take too long to respond. So let me give you some broad responses to hopefully get you think a little bit about how you come through in this forum. (Although it's probably wasted, since you appear to be the type of person that is not very good at taking feedback, or being called on his shallowness. It is fairly obvious that you have a pretty high opinion of yourself and your ability to pontificate on all matters from earthquakes to environment to economics).
1) You've said many a time on this forum that you've been a happy AAPL shareholder because you bought a lot when the stock was in the low teens years ago and held. You surely know that Apple's stock price has done so well, in major part, because of its high margins. Its margins are so high, in major part, because it has been able to keep the costs of its components and assembly down.
Let me ask you to reflect: Why do you think Apple has been able to do that? Does China have something to do with it? Indeed, what does China's pollution and environmental degradation and its imposition of global externalities (there's that word again: look it up, you may actualy learn something) have to do with wealth creation in portfolios such as yours? Are you willing to give that back? Of course not. "It's already happened."
I hear talk like yours all the time, esp. from the left of the political spectrum. It's well-intentioned but hypocritical. The people who complain the loudest about China are those who have benefitted from it mightily as consumers and shareholders, and yet have no clue that they have.
To paraphrase that old cliche, "we've seen the problem, and it is us."
2) Your general point is that the US can't go back and change things from the past 100 years, while China etc can, going forward. Well, there one thing that is fundamentally problematic wih that. It assumes that people who caused prior problems have no responsibility to help deal with or clean up its consequences. That's no different from saying that the Catholic church can't change what's happened with its priests, or Europe with its National Socialist parties and sundry fascists, so just suck it up and move on.
No, we have to deal with these head on, because we have to change future behavior.
The behavior that I am talking about changing is - if we'd like China to put a lid on its economic activity going forward or achieve its growth in cleaner ways - reducing our own pollution and emissions to Chinese levels. Unthinkable, right? So is it for the Chinese to not contemplate growth.
As long as the average American emits 20 tons of CO2 per year (to China's 5 tons or India's 1 ton; Source: US Energy Inofrmation Administration, www.eia.gov), what we have is a problem going forward to the next 100 years.
3) Yes, the US has done a lot in the past couple of decades. Although the Clean Air Act and other similar legislation is from the early 60s, it was not until the major revision in 1990, or about 100 years after the beginning of the US economic miracle - which, btw, ended up denuding our land and forests, and polluting our air and waters - that we began to course-correct. For instance, people don't realize that pristine (today) Northern New England was practically a forest wasteland and its waters were highly toxic and polluted through the first half of the 20th century: It is only in the past few decades, i.e., decades after it all started, that it has become what it is today. Think, for instance, about how long the problems with GE and the Hudson festered before the dredging actually began this year!
4) That brings me to the politics of it all. I'll ignore your swipes (well, fwiw, I think highly of Obama, and have no particular AXE to grind, but that's irrelevant). He's appointed some very good people to his administration, and the intentions are all very good, but right now the US is all political vaporware on these issues. Everything is talk (including what the EPA has said so far, or the Democraticaly controlled Congress). We should wait to see what is actually accomplished before popping champagne corks. My guess is, even when we do, we'll get something along the lines of what we've seen with Gitmo and warrantless wiretapping and miltary tribunals and such: political reality trumps grand pronouncements.
Don't be such a wiseguy about you not being able to resist. Most of what you're saying is nonsense, and it's you who have to prove much of it.
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(SNIP)
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Wow! What a convoluted statement!
So it's our fault that others don't want to do for themselves, even when they can afford to do so.
I'm not trivializing it, and you're wrong. Deng stated that China needed 'untrammeled" growth. You should know this.
A good article of Deng's concepts and how that's evolving;
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php...d=2&subcatid=7
A more recent view of how even that is being perverted;
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...rs/deng-undone
Sheesh, now you're really off the charts ridiculous: I am giving you actual facts, and you're giving me Deng Xiaoping's pronouncements from 1978!?
The guy's dead, you know..... died more than a decade ago.
This has little if ANY relevance to the topic and hand.
I come here hoping to see a decent, reasonable and mature response to the topic of what could Apple be building such a large server farm for. Instead we get Anantksundaram and Melgross at each other's throats about who has the best economic theory.
Please! Grow up would you?
To paraphrase that old cliche, "we've seen the problem, and it is us."
Point of order. It's not a cliche, it's an actual quote from Walt Kelly you are torturing.
I come here hoping to see a decent, reasonable and mature response to the topic of what could Apple be building such a large server farm for. Instead we get Anantksundaram and Melgross at each other's throats......
You're absolutely right. It's my fault: I should know that there's no point in starting an argument with, or contradicting melgross, since it will not end.
I'll stop.
(Of course, I am not making any promises about future threads!
Wow. For someone who's not particularly adept at the basics of economics -- for instance, you think the word "externalities" is convoluted -- you sure are pretty arrogant ("all economists are idiots")!
I know a lot more about economics than you do, my friend. If you could show just one or two major situations when economists were able to make correct predictions of what was going to happen over a period of time, I might have more respect for their theories. The concept is "predictive validity". They sure can explain what already happened, though even there, most disagree with other.
It's somewhat laughable that you should be calling others "wiseguy."
I respond to other the way they respond to me. You started to belittle my statements, so I returned the complement.
There are so many inconsistencies, unsubstaniated claims, and contradictions, and so much shrill name-calling in your diatribe that I honestly don't know where to begin. Franky, it will take too long to respond. So let me give you some broad responses to hopefully get you think a little bit about how you come through in this forum. (Although it's probably wasted, since you appear to be the type of person that is not very good at taking feedback, or being called on his shallowness. It is fairly obvious that you have a pretty high opinion of yourself and your ability to pontificate on all matters from earthquakes to environment to economics).
You haven't pointed out a single one, and I've at least given links to show some of mine.
1) You've said many a time on this forum that you've been a happy AAPL shareholder because you bought a lot when the stock was in the low teens years ago and held. You surely know that Apple's stock price has done so well, in major part, because of its high margins. Its margins are so high, in major part, because it has been able to keep the costs of its components and assembly down.
Let me ask you to reflect: Why do you think Apple has been able to do that? Does China have something to do with it? Indeed, what does China's pollution and environmental degradation and its imposition of global externalities (there's that word again: look it up, you may actualy learn something) have to do with wealth creation in portfolios such as yours? Are you willing to give that back? Of course not. "It's already happened."
This is another shortsighted remark you're making.
When most of the worlds computers were made in the US, and we were the largest exported of computers, profits from companies making them were pretty damn good as well. It's true that prices were higher, but people were used to paying higher prices for most things then.
The fact that Apple, as others, makes their products in Asia, doesn't give them any advantage over any other manufacturer, because they ALL make their computers there.
I don't know why you only see what you want to. Do you really think that Apple has good margins because they make products there, and that other computer manufacturers, for the most part, don't, because they make their computers?where, exactly?
You're trying to convolve more than one thing, when they have little to p with each other. What does this have to do with my portfolio, or you're contention that I should give some of it back?
I hear talk like yours all the time, esp. from the left of the political spectrum. It's well-intentioned but hypocritical. The people who complain the loudest about China are those who have benefitted from it mightily as consumers and shareholders, and yet have no clue that they have.
What is that supposed to mean? "Talk like mine"? That's ridiculous!
I know exactly what's going on. I also know what I have, and why. Mybe you'r jealous about that, but it's not my fault.
I invest in Apple for the same reasons why we buy their products. Because they are well designed, work well, and the software is what we think of as the best. I think that it gives the company a good future.
It has nothing to do with where it's produced. I often defend China against those who constantly disparage their industry. But as everyone is producing there (or Taiwan), there is no advantage for Apple to be doing the same, just the chance to not fall behind in cost.
To paraphrase that old cliche, "we've seen the problem, and it is us."
Surely, you don't think I believe that we're perfect? You've been here long enough to have read my criticsms as well.
2) Your general point is that the US can't go back and change things from the past 100 years, while China etc can, going forward. Well, there one thing that is fundamentally problematic wih that. It assumes that people who caused prior problems have no responsibility to help deal with or clean up its consequences. That's no different from saying that the Catholic church can't change what's happened with its priests, or Europe with its National Socilaist parties and sundry fascists, so just suck it up and move on.
If China was in a state where they had no control over their own fate, then i would entirely agree with you. But as thats not true, I can't agree.
If China made the proper laws, and enforced them properly, it would affect EVERY company in the country. It would affect their own, as well as the foreign ones operating their, and the ones making goods for the foreign ones.
This would raise costs for everyone, INCLUDING our companies doing business there. Therefor, we WOULD be paying for it, by having the goods we purchase from them costing more.
But for whatever reason, you seem to be ignoring the fact that their growth is phenominal. Their profits are also. Their balance of trade is th greatest in the world, surpassing Japans. They can afford to do whatever they need to do. They just choose not to.
You really aren't addressing what I'm saying, just making general statements in disagreement.
Another thing you're ignoring, is that many countries who have had terrible dictatorships have done that very thing, allowing past injustices to go unpunished, after acknowledging their actuality. Look to Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and others.
So what do you want to do? go back to the past? We deal with what is here now.
No, we have to deal with these head on, because we have to change future behavior.
You say no, but you are really saying the same thing I am.
The behavior that I am talking about changing is - if we'd like China to put a lid on its economic activity going forward or achieve its growth in cleaner ways - reducing our own pollution and emissions to Chinese levels. Unthinkable, right? So is it for the Chinese to not contemplate growth.
But you're not making a logical argument. The Chinese are increasing their pollution at a fantastic rate. Technology only allows us to do what we can to lower ours. We are far more industrialized than they are yet. But our industry is polluting much less than theirs is. We admit high carbon emissions, it's true, but our rate has slowed down, we ARE working on it. But theirs has passed ours, and it looks as though theirs will continue to increase at very high rates for the foreseeable future. And yet again, you refuse to admit that policies on the national level here have changed.
As long as the average American emits 20 tons of CO2 per year (to China's 5 tons or India's 1 ton), what we have is a problem going forward to the next 100 years.
Our numbers have leveled off, and in many industries have been going down. But theirs is rising at very rapid rates. Their absolute numbers in China are higher than ours already. I wouldn't be surprised if their per capita rates pass ours either.
3) Yes, the US has done a lot in the past couple of decades. Although the Clean Air Act and other similar legislation is from the early 60s, it was not until the major revision in 1990, or about 100 years after the beginning of the US economic miracle - which, btw, ended up denuding our land and forests, and polluting our air and waters - that we began to course-correct. For instance, people don't realize that pristine (today) Northern New England was practically a forest wasteland and its waters were highly toxic and polluted through the first half of the 20th century: It is only in the past few decades, i.e., decades after it all started, that it has become what it is today. Think, for instance, about how long the problems with GE and the Hudson festered before the dredging actually began this year!
A agree with that. no argument there. no one thought about this 100 years ago. Only after we realized what was happening did we work to roll these problems back. for the past three decades, forests have been growing back at rates that about equal the rates they were being cut. and populated. Our rivers have been cleaned up immensely, though there's still work to be done. We still have problems with strip mining. There's legislation to minimize that, and mist mining has to include re-forestation afterwards. This is one of our biggest problems, but it's very minor when compared to what's going on over there.
We also have laws here, so things must go through the courts. They don't have that there.
4) That brings me to the politics of it all. I'll ignore your swipes (well, fwiw, I think highly of Obama, and have no particular AXE to grind, but that's irrelevant). He's appointed some very good people to his administration, and the intentions are all very good, but right now the US is all political vaporware on these issues. Everything is talk (including what the EPA has said so far, or the Democraticaly controlled Congress). We should wait to see what is actually accomplished before popping champagne corks. My guess is, even when we do, we'll get something along the lines of what we've seen with Gitmo and warrantless wiretapping: poliitcal reality trumps grand pronouncements.
Well, it's good that you've finally said something about that.
I don't expect miracles. I do expect more progress. we've already come a long way, despite the foot dragging of the Bush administration.
And understand that I'm a strong environmentalist. I contribute a good amount to my organizations every year. I fought against the loosening of the laws that administration was attempting.
My argument here is that it's very difficult to change course in the middle, but it's much easier to go in the right direction from the beginning. It also costs far less to do it right from the beginning, than have to clean it up later, after much has already been lost forever.
It wouldn't have slowed Chinas growth much to have started out right, but they chose not to. We've had to turn the ship around, which is always much harder to do, as people bcome set in their ways.
Nevertheless, it's turning.
You can't blame us forwhat's happening there.
You also can't expect us to give up most of what we fought for over 200 years. It ain't gonna happen, and truthfully, you wouldn't want it to happen.
And if you stop disparaging me, I'll stop disparaging you.