PythonicAlpha

It will be like it happened to the German banks: When in trouble, tax payers will bail them out.

Maybe chemists would be better politicians. Maybe nearly any educated person ...

I also do not fully understand, why this is so. But before the Euro started our politicians drummed the big drums for it and repeated like machine guns, that such a situation could never, never ever (I swear!) happen ... But after Greece nearly went bankrupt in 2010, I guess, our chancellor said that this would be the "one and only alternative".

The problem is (as much I understood), that when one Euro country is going bankrupt, this will damage the confidence in the currency as such. But I don't fully understand the reasoning, as I said.

It also could be, that it was the "one and only alternative", because some big German banks would have been severely damaged back then (back then, they held a big amount of the Greek debts) ... Today, only the tax payers will be damaged, what is not so bad ...

The whole story of Greece is not very nice.

Many sides have had their share in this. The Greek government of this time has made some severe errors. But I see an even bigger share in the EU (also German) politicians of that time (before the Euro was installed). It is a fact, that those politicians sold the Euro to the German population (I guess to others the same way) with the argument, that no country will ever have to pay for an other Euro country. They said, that there are so many security measures installed ...

But the weakest spot in those "security measures" where the politicians themselves. They wanted Greece to be inside the Euro, so they turned a blind eye to any warning signs. Of course they also turned a blind eye to every other country, because according to the "security measures" that where announced, nearly no country would have got the Euro ... (even Germany violated the terms)

So, I see the biggest failure in the politicians, that just wanted to have this adventure -- without really managing the risks ....

It is really an ugly business, and we will see, where all this disaster (the Euro) leads us to. In now 5 years of so-called crisis-management, they even did not manage to "rescue" Greece ... (they just prolonged the pain) and other countries can still become in trouble soon. With a bigger country, the troubles will be proliferated.

For me, the whole case is a (n other) portent of the incapacity of today's politicians.

This article grossly oversimplifies things.

The shares of labor cost, energy cost and transportation cost are differing very much from industry to industry. Also, automate of the production of different products is differing very much. You can not compare for example car factoring with software development or food production.

Of course, you can argue that cheap energy gives an industry an advantage. But what happens here are things that are independent of each other. For example, labor costs in China have risen and it gets more difficult to find cheap and adequate workers.

Also you always should consider the consequences: Will the short-terim-advantage for some (!) industries really outweigh the long-term consequences?

I was only reacting on the argument was made by the OP, that is not logical in my opinion.

I do not know about tech wages in the US. In Germany, the tech wages are not inflated, at least not in my opinion. The normal tech wages have risen maybe 3-5% per year the last few years in Germany (I don't call this inflated) and the years before it was even less.

In the same time, the wages for top-managers have risen maybe 10-15% per year and are since decades incredible high above the wages of "tech wages" (the difference is climbing and climbing). I call that inflated.

Your statement of course is more logical than that of the OP.

If the problem would be just employees "shopping around" that would not explain, why wages are not rising. If they would shop around, wages would also rise, even when they are only marginal interested in wages ... (show me 3 employees that are not interested in wages)

One of the problems IMHO is, that employers get more and more demanding.

There is this joke, that fits very good: "If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers" [1]

In former days, the readiness to take people and train them on the job was much higher. In Germany this is a really ugly trend. The licence for truck drivers is very, very costly but the earnings of the drivers are very low. In former days the transportation companies educated their own drivers. Today, they don't. They just expect, that the drivers somehow have to have the education and come from somewhere. What is the result: The state is in more and more cases educating unemployed people that they can become truck drivers. They pay tax money, that the transporting companies don't have to pay for it ...

I don't think, that a "free market" has to mean that more and more costs have to been taken over by the state, but that is, what is happening.

Today, when you apply for a job, they search for exactly those skills needed. They are not ready to train you on the job or take people that have to do a lot of learning on the job. And also in Germany: They are not ready to take people above a specific age.

[1] http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/News/Item/7c334037d1a9437d9fa650...

In the education/upbringing of children, it is a long known fact, that you will get what you expect.

Tell a child, that it will fail over and over again, you will most likely get a failure. Tell a similar child from its birth over and over again that it will be a winner, you will get a person that is much more likely a winner than the other person.

The US society today trains failures. It starts by being born in the wrong district of a city or belonging to the wrong race. When in such a case, you have no good family (eg. single mother), you have all odds against you. It goes on, by visiting the wrong school ...

Yes, it seems to be a little two-faced. You are stupid, if you don't take hard cash, but when you do, you are called crooked.

Ok, that was a detail, I simply misunderstood. I thought, that she refused the settlement and wanted to bring it to court.

Still, without knowing the details, it is difficult to judge over a persons motives.

That is just the opposite of what I tried to say. I am not a native speaker, so I might have been misunderstood ...??

Some things just go beyond figures ...

What do you want to say?

Should everybody just pick the money and run? Without knowing the details of the case and the reasoning of the people, it also could be possible that this woman was not looking for the money, but righteousness.

And no, I am not convinced (without knowing any details), that because the judgement was against her, that this is justness. (I have seen so many unjust judgments in my own country that where based on the fact, that one side had the better lawyers or better experts they hired)

Jurisdiction in human hands can always be an approximation of justness.

That is basically, what I wanted to say: Don't go with every fad and not with every "scientific" study. Some scientists are still trustworthy of course ... but as with politicians, not everybody is a person of integrity.

> it's because you've been fed with lies

Really, really good spoken!

I myself started distrusting many scientific claims. One day, all fats are bad for you, the other day only specific fats are bad and the next day, having to few fats are bad ...

And those fats are not the only "fads" that are around ... Today "xyz" is good for you ... tomorrow, who knows ...

EDIT for the downvoters:

I did not say, that all scientific claims are bullshit, but I want to say, that particularly some "scientific" claims paid by some big corporations might to be taken with a grain of salt! There are just to many people interested in "scientific" justification.

Yes, it seems. Still I don't like them much, since they changed to compressing controllers, as much I know, SandForce controllers which have a mixed reputation, as much I remember. But it looks, that Samsung is not better.

I once was a huge fan of Samsung. But with the EVO disaster and this one, I really regret to have bought one of these.

While I am in doubt with the numbers, I agree with the trend. Writable DVDs last sometimes even less years, since they are produced so cheap.

There where the MO-Drives, that really lasted many decades, but they also vanished.

Best solution currently are the old-school tapes, since they are created as real backup-solution. Trouble is, that when you want to buy a current drive (with enough data density) you will have to invest a stack of money just for the drive. Also the equipment and tapes are seldom sold for consumers. I looked up some figures ... and one cartridge currently costs half the sum of the same hdd space (consumer drives). So even the cartridges are rather costly for consumers.

I agree, that hdds are still better, than the average optical media. But the reason is that the optical media are just crap today. When the CD was invented, they told us, they will hold life-long. Ok, CD-Rs/DVD-Rs are slightly different, but still it would be possible for them to be good after 40 years with still a reasonable price (I have no statistics, but I would say, that the TYs come rather near to this ideal).

I did not want to go into a lengthy discussion about hdds and backup (and still don't want to). Just one thing: While some last really decades without trouble and are really great, it can well be that you have bought one that will just fail one day and than you are bust. While the price-tag of hdds is low today, it is not so low, that you would put four or five of them on your shelf just for backup (I might do in the future, but not yet now). For a good backup-strategy you should not rely on just one media (that can be destroyed by one single drop!).

What also bothers me is, that currently only two or three real producers of hdds are left.

Yes, looks like a good solution for archival purposes. The price-surplus is rather big -- so for many usages, I would still want my TYs.

Yes, but again we have the same trouble (as before the optical media era): Either you make no backups at all or when you have a rock-solid backup-solution, you must buy very expensive hardware.

Of course you can do backups into the cloud ... or on hard drives -- that is today the only solution that is still not so costly for normal users. But in my opinion, a sub-optimal solution.

In quality, I don't know a brand, that is better. Others that where, have already given up (eg. Kodak).

For example, I read that Sony once had good discs, but today are just re-branding discs of a much lower-quality brand.

There are two problems with the recording media business:

- Because of cloud usage and low prices for hard drives, the usage of recording media is vanishing

- The market for CD-R, DVD-Recordables and others was always dominated by the price ... most customers just looked at the price tag, not on the quality of the media.

It is really a sad thing, because TY is really one of the last quality oriented producer of recording media around.

What is the advantage, I have, when I safe 10ct on the disc, but loose it after one year, because of bad quality? But there where just to few people around with such thinking (other companies already stopped producing higher priced media long ago).

Edit:

When I write about "quality" I don't primarily mean the trouble of buffer-underruns or wrong writes, but the problem, that many lower cost discs are prone to fail after rather short time of storage. As much I know, the TY discs not only made less troubles in writers, but also last longer as other discs. And also there are legit usages of CD-R(W)s -- I used them long time as backup media -- but without quality suppliers, it is no option any more (the size of the discs would not necessarily be a problem, since when I backup only sources, they still fit).

I guess it is the same old fallacy that crept into some big software companies long time ago.

The fallacy is called "speed":

Some companies are just looking for young, smart people who can solve problems fast.

This fallacy has some correct side: Software development is most of the time about solving problems and when you can solve them faster, you will have the software faster.

The fallacy part is, that fast is the only quality you need.

With many, smart and young developers right of the college, you can create a huge pile of software in short time ... but you can also create a huge pile of problems in a short time. That is the reason, there are so many quality problems and security troubles around. Those young, smart people just lack the experience to make good design decisions ... and those decisions do not end, when the rough design is done.

Those people make fast decisions, but they just lack the experience to oversee the consequences of those decisions.

Without also having experienced developers around, which can share their experiences and guide other people, many companies are doomed to have bad quality software also in the future.

I have different sources, claiming the opposite.

But of course it invalidates my argument, when I don't believe the "official" statements. I see it in my country: The official statements are always true and everybody else a liar. It is written in the Prawda.

In theory, you might be right. In practice it is absolute different. Those courts where mostly installed in the past to protect the interests of bigger countries against smaller countries. Of course, in some cases it was necessary, but in practice it was used to protect the interests of big corporations against the smaller countries. And that is the reason, we got such frivolous acting of corporations. They just knew, that the courts acted on their side.

An exception in direction "health/safety" will not help either, since bad countries will label everything "health/safety" further on and the other way around there are still enough possibilities for frivolous movements of corporations.

Secret courts will never be the solution!

The question is: Who paid for the studies. We in Europe where told how much we could get from TTIP -- afterwards, the EU had to revise the figures again and again. Also it was predicted, that people in the EU will have 500 EUR extra per year ... but nobody guarantees, that everybody will have the same figure.

I predict, that it will go like with the Mexico treaty. I lately saw a documentary about it and they said, that some people in Mexico have more money -- but the poor people have less, since many farmers are in disadvantage because of the treaty. Also many workers have disadvantages, because worker prices have dropped on both sides of the border.

The problem with TTIP in my opinion is, that those that pull the strings from the background are the big corporations and those that act for the interests of the big money. The results can be seen for example in the US/Mexico treaty that resulted in lower standards (eg. environmental, health, worker welfare, ...) and lower wages on both sides of the border.

It is not about "free market" -- but about the ideology behind the current system. It has the name "free market" -- but it is only free for those, that have the money to control politics. That are the persons that control, what is negotiated at TTIP and other treaties.

To answer your question: Go to Bangladesh, go to Mexico (already have a treaty like TTIP in place, and what happened: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer), go to Germany, go to the US. Must I go on?

I don't think, your question was a real question.

You view the world from your position (of a rather rich guy) -- but there are approx. 5 billion people poorer than you and me around.

Edit: One final thought about it: Even when you are on the profitable side of today's system (what might even change), you even might be effected by its back-sides, when for example environmental regulations are lowered. Many regulations today are lowered or not strengthened, because they could potentially harm big corporations. Also in the rich countries, even rich people are dying of environmental induced deceases. That politics is turning more and more a blind eye to those problems, is showing, that we are indeed enslaved!

The trend was started long ago. The whole notion of "globalization" is a development to disempower the single nations. Before the globalization was known in Germany, it was a nation that could stand against the big corporations and say "we have our own rules in this country" (e.g. worker rights, environmental, ...).

And we had a state where wealth was rather evenly divided and with many people that did well. Also we had rather low crime and view people had to worry that they could be poor when they are old.

Than came globalization and the notion that the "free market" will be always right and will make things (automatically) perfect. (That was promoted by Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan, to name two early adopters). Than the governments in Germany and all over the world started to bend. "It is the free market, we can not do anything against it" was said by them. "We have to bend our laws to comply with the free market".

So it was going all over the world.

What do we have today: All over the world, people get richer ... 1% of the people. The others get gradually poorer and the lowest part of the people are really poor, because in Germany it is already clear, that a big part of the people working today, will not be able to live from the pensions they will get.

So the "free market" took over and the "free nations" are enslaved by one economic theory, that nobody has ever proved.

We are all at the mercy of "unlimited growth". Our economic systems are only stable, when growth is guaranteed. In biology, unlimited growth is called cancer.