So, there's a lot to unpack here, but I'll start here: First and foremost, are you suggesting that China is somehow less corrupt or deeply flawed? Was Mao somehow better than the south's...
So, there's a lot to unpack here, but I'll start here:
There's nothing racist about it, these countries are often corrupt or at least deeply flawed. People in these countries need to change that, but most don't seem interested in real change just who the next dictator might be.
First and foremost, are you suggesting that China is somehow less corrupt or deeply flawed? Was Mao somehow better than the south's contemporaries? It also ignores how the USA has, on multiple occassions, sponsored military coups to overthow governments, including democratically elected ones. In other words, these are deeply flawed countries because the USA shipped manufacturing to one continent and destabilized the other.
If you ask a Chines citizen if they're lives are better now then fifty years ago, this is also why. Nothing is stopping china from developing it's own IP, and in fact they are working on that, thanks to the resources this 'asymmetric' trade has offered them.
The point (at least partially) was that China has been "developing" their own IP because they ignored IP law. That's what Doctorow is addressing. China benefited in part because it wasn't assymetrical. They ignored IP law to develop their own stuff. How is a country supposed to learn from the processes they're building if they aren't legally allowed to? "Show up to the factory we built for you and push your button" does not translate to learning how to build and design new goods.
Doctorow is not advocating against global trade. He's advocating against power imbalance, the kind that wealthy countries can currently instill by offering a few crumbs off the plate. His point is that these trade agreements provide vast benefits to the wealthy countries drafting them, and minimal benefits to the countries accepting their terms. The key point:
In other words, poor countries were expected to export, say, raw ore to the USA and reimport high-tech goods, with low tariffs in both directions. But if a poor country processed that ore domestically and made its own finished goods, the US would block those goods at the border, slapping them with high tariffs that made them more expensive than Made-in-the-USA equivalents.
Vord - you may or may not have intended it this way, but the "there's a lot to unpack here" is quite dismissive. Endgameomega is arguing in good faith. Easy mistake to make - I've said it myself -...
So, there's a lot to unpack here, but
Vord - you may or may not have intended it this way, but the "there's a lot to unpack here" is quite dismissive. Endgameomega is arguing in good faith.
Easy mistake to make - I've said it myself - but I thought you'd want to know.
Just to clear this up for everybody: Yes, it was mildly dismissive. And yes, that's fine. My point was to dismiss the arguement, not the person. And that is a perfectly valid social construct. I...
Exemplary
Just to clear this up for everybody: Yes, it was mildly dismissive. And yes, that's fine. My point was to dismiss the arguement, not the person. And that is a perfectly valid social construct. I lacked the hours needed to properly break everything down into a nice tidy, well edited discertation, but in short yes: I do think most of @EndGameOmega's post was worthy of dismissal, and could have easily sourced much more than I did. But again lacking time, I didn't. Here's a nice study for everyone that backs up a good bit of what Doctorow was getting at: The global south is being plundered by the west, and that the free trade isn't really free. There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, as they say.
I'd get laughed out of an Econ 201 class if I stood there and argued that increased demand didn't put upward pressure on prices. And my treatment was fairer than that I feel. In part because nothing they said was quite so ridiculous, but that it misread substantial bits of the article and the together several disjointed points to support it (and I won't pretend I did better at the end of the day). There was no sourcing, substantial handwaving of overthrowing governmental power, and ignoring the fact that the several billions of dollars that these companies have access to could prop up damn near factory of any type anywhere in the world, regardless of complexity. Apple alone has enough assets they could probably pay to completely disassmble an entire fab plant and reassemble it halfway across the world.
And again, I'm not trying to belittle OP by this....but to say it was a big post to unpack is not unfair IMO. In part because I had to pick and choose what to discuss based on my limited time.
My point was to dismiss the arguement, not the person. And that is a perfectly valid social construct. I lacked the hours needed to properly break everything down into a nice tidy, well edited discertation, but in short yes: I do think most of @EndGameOmega's post was worthy of dismissal, and could have easily sourced much more than I did.
I don't really understand how this is dismissive? If anything it strikes me as the opposite -- it's saying that there's a lot to address in the comment they're replying to.
the "there's a lot to unpack here" is quite dismissive.
I don't really understand how this is dismissive? If anything it strikes me as the opposite -- it's saying that there's a lot to address in the comment they're replying to.
Right, exactly - but not in a good way. In the context of an online debate, it has a very strong connotation of "you said so many things wrong that I don't even know where to begin." Rather that...
it's saying that there's a lot to address in the comment they're replying to.
Right, exactly - but not in a good way. In the context of an online debate, it has a very strong connotation of "you said so many things wrong that I don't even know where to begin."
Rather that assuming noble intent, it's assuming bad intent.
I’ve never thought about it enough to put into words, but my own instinct about that phrase is similar, in that it comes off as dismissive. Weirdly, I have no such qualms about “there’s a lot to...
I’ve never thought about it enough to put into words, but my own instinct about that phrase is similar, in that it comes off as dismissive.
Weirdly, I have no such qualms about “there’s a lot to address here” even though the words/phrase are almost identical in meaning?
Well, it's a classic reddit gotcha phrase that certainly puts a bad taste in my mouth. "Unpack" almost feels ad hominem, a play to expose some assumed -ism or fatal character flaw by unraveling...
Well, it's a classic reddit gotcha phrase that certainly puts a bad taste in my mouth.
"Unpack" almost feels ad hominem, a play to expose some assumed -ism or fatal character flaw by unraveling the obviously-super-tainted argument.
"Address" is receptive and puts only the argument on the table.
That's how I feel but I'm curious what other reactions it gets? Seems like tone could be a huge factor here as well, which is terrible to convey over text.
My take - when you'd use "unpack" in a neutral context, it's a sort of sardonic comical statement. If I said "my figure skating lessons went terrible. And now my horse is in the hospital." you...
My take - when you'd use "unpack" in a neutral context, it's a sort of sardonic comical statement. If I said "my figure skating lessons went terrible. And now my horse is in the hospital." you might say "there's a lot to unpack there," meaning "woah you just said some crazy stuff."
For that reason, while both address and unpack are mildly negative in that they both say "I'm about to disagree with you," saying "there's a lot to address" connotes "you made a lot of points," while saying "there's a lot to unpack" connotes "you made a lot of points... and they're crazy."
Lol that said, "panties in a bunch" also is a bit sexist. I prefer "knickers in a twist." The rabbithole of word entymology, offensiveness, and subtlety runs deep. I think if we all try too hard...
Lol that said, "panties in a bunch" also is a bit sexist. I prefer "knickers in a twist."
The rabbithole of word entymology, offensiveness, and subtlety runs deep. I think if we all try too hard to avoid all of the pitfalls, we end up with neutral, boring, samey language.
Sadly the internet being the internet, its much harder to build that sort of social contract that lets one distinguish between flavorful and offensive.
This point was made to great dramatic effect in the film Ghandi. The important point here, is that these colonial behaviors are old. Also, while not universally true, humanity tends to get away...
In other words, poor countries were expected to export, say, raw ore to the USA and reimport high-tech goods, with low tariffs in both directions.
This point was made to great dramatic effect in the film Ghandi. The important point here, is that these colonial behaviors are old. Also, while not universally true, humanity tends to get away with whatever it thinks it can, and thinks very short-term. So a group of Calvinists would happily exploit the cheap labor and raw materials of some other group, and are resistant to understanding how that even if the people treatment was somehow moral, the environmental damage will sooner or later harm them or their descendants. Often, though, collapse occurs, or the exploited get uppity (as in India, although poor saps have yet to dig out from under all the colonial and internally generated and re-generated trauma).
Just because a guy is smart and right about one thing doesn't mean he's not wrong about other things.
EDIT: So, I'm re-reading this and I didn't realize this was written by Cory Doctorow. Although I disagree with his politics I've generally agreed with his logic in regards to free information and anti-DRM stance. I don't know, maybe I'm missing something about his points in this article, but it just, seems like he's missing key points about how semiconductors and ICs are made and complexities regarding information creation in regards to those items.
Just because a guy is smart and right about one thing doesn't mean he's not wrong about other things.
That's westerner-morphic view of Chinese political structure. I don't pretend to understand how China's politics and culture work, but I'm pretty sure democracy plays a much smaller role than we...
If China wanted differently, it's people could chose that.
That's westerner-morphic view of Chinese political structure. I don't pretend to understand how China's politics and culture work, but I'm pretty sure democracy plays a much smaller role than we like to pretend it does here in the US.
There is a legitimate question of what, if anything, does the "Western World" or corporations started here owe anybody in terms of trade or anything else.
Morals aside, though, there are plenty of pragmatic arguments to be made regarding the way overly generous intellectual property controls the US imposes. It does perhaps limit near term wealth accumulation of the upper echelons of the capitalist class, but overall innovation thrives when the creative/engineering class can use and re-imagine work that has gone on before.
Property is whatever the body with enforcement power says it is. For now, the US with its vast military and financial apparatus appears to have little external limits on what it claims.
For all my misginvings about Trump, he did get one thing right at least in my opinion: he imposed tarriffs with the express purpose of equalizing labor cost factor in the material sale price between domestic production and that produced elsewhere. If I were emperor, I would take a similar approach, but also include environmental and social costs.
I think the core cynicism here is the fact that "X isn't bad but Rich corporation Y has perverted it to be a net loss for almost everyone else" (a common theme in Cory's writing). e.g Globalism...
it under sells the value of globally connected world
I think the core cynicism here is the fact that "X isn't bad but Rich corporation Y has perverted it to be a net loss for almost everyone else" (a common theme in Cory's writing).
e.g Globalism isn't bad. trying to host HQ in a rich country and take advantadge of labor in a poor country to save money is bad for both countries in question. You get a benefit of cheap product for consumers but an under-labored rich country and exploited (but still not properly stimulated) poor country.
Plus, the US talent pool is, different. It makes somethings harder.
Yeah, that's a big part of his point. It's "harder" because the US has much stricter checks, regulations, and labor requirements. Which is a bit sad of a comparison stick, but we are comparing to Chinese labor here.
Is the potential innovation worth the unshackling of labor protections. It's a question that the US has answered often (and to this day in some areas) with "yes" as all kinds of outsourcing or behind the back labor goes on. But being unethical before does not necessarily justify being unethical now (we made laws after the "before" for a reason).
The main difference now rather than before is that these companies very much can afford to do it "correctly", but simply choose the cheapest option. Profits over all (which goes back to the thematical cynicism). Not a new factor, but there's been a lot more profits focus lately, and a lot less anti-trust as of late.
There's nothing racist about it, these countries are often corrupt or at least deeply flawed. People in these countries need to change that, but most don't seem interested in real change just who the next dictator might be. On that topic, the thing that terrifies me about the USA is we've got two sides who want the same thing, a dictator, they just want it to be their dictator
It's an oversimplified voting system that forces oversimplified campaigns that make it sound like any given president can deliver the moon in 4 years. That never happens. But one of the few bipartisan aggreements is never allowing a proper 3rd/4th/etc. party to rise up.
A scale of revolution needed to break that would fix a lot of other problems overnight. It's a large enough force to engage and national walk-out and have corporate surrender in days. But apathy (be it willful or by means of draining the populace of energy) has always been humanity's largest opponent.
as for racism; well, it's more prejudice in general, warranted or not. A lot of that simplified platform also preys on fear, and fear is one of the most effective emotions to manipulate. A big part of platforms can be summed down "[other party] wants to take away your freedom!". As seen with a lot of modern politics, platforms have shifted from "we want to give you X" to "we're not [other side] pick the lesser evil!".
The only examples I can think of that even sort of speak to this statement actively disprove it. Mexico, for instance, makes a massive amount of America's manufacturing. There have been tariffs on...
In other words, poor countries were expected to export, say, raw ore to the USA and reimport high-tech goods, with low tariffs in both directions. But if a poor country processed that ore domestically and made its own finished goods, the US would block those goods at the border, slapping them with high tariffs that made them more expensive than Made-in-the-USA equivalents.
The only examples I can think of that even sort of speak to this statement actively disprove it.
Mexico, for instance, makes a massive amount of America's manufacturing. There have been tariffs on Chinese steel, but I'm not sure that example really holds when China also makes so much stuff that gets shipped to America. And besides, China is the destination of almost all the world's raw materials, so if anything they'd be the bad guy in Mr Doctorow's example.
Can anyone point to a poor country that has the ability to compete with American manufacturing, but isn't being allowed to do so because of tariffs? Serious question, I'd like to know if I'm wrong.
So, there's a lot to unpack here, but I'll start here:
First and foremost, are you suggesting that China is somehow less corrupt or deeply flawed? Was Mao somehow better than the south's contemporaries? It also ignores how the USA has, on multiple occassions, sponsored military coups to overthow governments, including democratically elected ones. In other words, these are deeply flawed countries because the USA shipped manufacturing to one continent and destabilized the other.
The point (at least partially) was that China has been "developing" their own IP because they ignored IP law. That's what Doctorow is addressing. China benefited in part because it wasn't assymetrical. They ignored IP law to develop their own stuff. How is a country supposed to learn from the processes they're building if they aren't legally allowed to? "Show up to the factory we built for you and push your button" does not translate to learning how to build and design new goods.
Doctorow is not advocating against global trade. He's advocating against power imbalance, the kind that wealthy countries can currently instill by offering a few crumbs off the plate. His point is that these trade agreements provide vast benefits to the wealthy countries drafting them, and minimal benefits to the countries accepting their terms. The key point:
There's more, but I lack time.
Vord - you may or may not have intended it this way, but the "there's a lot to unpack here" is quite dismissive. Endgameomega is arguing in good faith.
Easy mistake to make - I've said it myself - but I thought you'd want to know.
Just to clear this up for everybody: Yes, it was mildly dismissive. And yes, that's fine. My point was to dismiss the arguement, not the person. And that is a perfectly valid social construct. I lacked the hours needed to properly break everything down into a nice tidy, well edited discertation, but in short yes: I do think most of @EndGameOmega's post was worthy of dismissal, and could have easily sourced much more than I did. But again lacking time, I didn't. Here's a nice study for everyone that backs up a good bit of what Doctorow was getting at: The global south is being plundered by the west, and that the free trade isn't really free. There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, as they say.
I'd get laughed out of an Econ 201 class if I stood there and argued that increased demand didn't put upward pressure on prices. And my treatment was fairer than that I feel. In part because nothing they said was quite so ridiculous, but that it misread substantial bits of the article and the together several disjointed points to support it (and I won't pretend I did better at the end of the day). There was no sourcing, substantial handwaving of overthrowing governmental power, and ignoring the fact that the several billions of dollars that these companies have access to could prop up damn near factory of any type anywhere in the world, regardless of complexity. Apple alone has enough assets they could probably pay to completely disassmble an entire fab plant and reassemble it halfway across the world.
And again, I'm not trying to belittle OP by this....but to say it was a big post to unpack is not unfair IMO. In part because I had to pick and choose what to discuss based on my limited time.
Everybody: @sparksbet, @R3qn65, @TrowdoBaggins, @dreamless_patio
Okay then.
I don't really understand how this is dismissive? If anything it strikes me as the opposite -- it's saying that there's a lot to address in the comment they're replying to.
Right, exactly - but not in a good way. In the context of an online debate, it has a very strong connotation of "you said so many things wrong that I don't even know where to begin."
Rather that assuming noble intent, it's assuming bad intent.
I don't personally have that connotation in this context, but fair enough.
I’ve never thought about it enough to put into words, but my own instinct about that phrase is similar, in that it comes off as dismissive.
Weirdly, I have no such qualms about “there’s a lot to address here” even though the words/phrase are almost identical in meaning?
Well, it's a classic reddit gotcha phrase that certainly puts a bad taste in my mouth.
"Unpack" almost feels ad hominem, a play to expose some assumed -ism or fatal character flaw by unraveling the obviously-super-tainted argument.
"Address" is receptive and puts only the argument on the table.
That's how I feel but I'm curious what other reactions it gets? Seems like tone could be a huge factor here as well, which is terrible to convey over text.
My take - when you'd use "unpack" in a neutral context, it's a sort of sardonic comical statement. If I said "my figure skating lessons went terrible. And now my horse is in the hospital." you might say "there's a lot to unpack there," meaning "woah you just said some crazy stuff."
For that reason, while both address and unpack are mildly negative in that they both say "I'm about to disagree with you," saying "there's a lot to address" connotes "you made a lot of points," while saying "there's a lot to unpack" connotes "you made a lot of points... and they're crazy."
Lol that said, "panties in a bunch" also is a bit sexist. I prefer "knickers in a twist."
The rabbithole of word entymology, offensiveness, and subtlety runs deep. I think if we all try too hard to avoid all of the pitfalls, we end up with neutral, boring, samey language.
Sadly the internet being the internet, its much harder to build that sort of social contract that lets one distinguish between flavorful and offensive.
This point was made to great dramatic effect in the film Ghandi. The important point here, is that these colonial behaviors are old. Also, while not universally true, humanity tends to get away with whatever it thinks it can, and thinks very short-term. So a group of Calvinists would happily exploit the cheap labor and raw materials of some other group, and are resistant to understanding how that even if the people treatment was somehow moral, the environmental damage will sooner or later harm them or their descendants. Often, though, collapse occurs, or the exploited get uppity (as in India, although poor saps have yet to dig out from under all the colonial and internally generated and re-generated trauma).
Just because a guy is smart and right about one thing doesn't mean he's not wrong about other things.
I definitely respect that!
That's westerner-morphic view of Chinese political structure. I don't pretend to understand how China's politics and culture work, but I'm pretty sure democracy plays a much smaller role than we like to pretend it does here in the US.
There is a legitimate question of what, if anything, does the "Western World" or corporations started here owe anybody in terms of trade or anything else.
Morals aside, though, there are plenty of pragmatic arguments to be made regarding the way overly generous intellectual property controls the US imposes. It does perhaps limit near term wealth accumulation of the upper echelons of the capitalist class, but overall innovation thrives when the creative/engineering class can use and re-imagine work that has gone on before.
Property is whatever the body with enforcement power says it is. For now, the US with its vast military and financial apparatus appears to have little external limits on what it claims.
For all my misginvings about Trump, he did get one thing right at least in my opinion: he imposed tarriffs with the express purpose of equalizing labor cost factor in the material sale price between domestic production and that produced elsewhere. If I were emperor, I would take a similar approach, but also include environmental and social costs.
I think the core cynicism here is the fact that "X isn't bad but Rich corporation Y has perverted it to be a net loss for almost everyone else" (a common theme in Cory's writing).
e.g Globalism isn't bad. trying to host HQ in a rich country and take advantadge of labor in a poor country to save money is bad for both countries in question. You get a benefit of cheap product for consumers but an under-labored rich country and exploited (but still not properly stimulated) poor country.
Yeah, that's a big part of his point. It's "harder" because the US has much stricter checks, regulations, and labor requirements. Which is a bit sad of a comparison stick, but we are comparing to Chinese labor here.
Is the potential innovation worth the unshackling of labor protections. It's a question that the US has answered often (and to this day in some areas) with "yes" as all kinds of outsourcing or behind the back labor goes on. But being unethical before does not necessarily justify being unethical now (we made laws after the "before" for a reason).
The main difference now rather than before is that these companies very much can afford to do it "correctly", but simply choose the cheapest option. Profits over all (which goes back to the thematical cynicism). Not a new factor, but there's been a lot more profits focus lately, and a lot less anti-trust as of late.
It's an oversimplified voting system that forces oversimplified campaigns that make it sound like any given president can deliver the moon in 4 years. That never happens. But one of the few bipartisan aggreements is never allowing a proper 3rd/4th/etc. party to rise up.
A scale of revolution needed to break that would fix a lot of other problems overnight. It's a large enough force to engage and national walk-out and have corporate surrender in days. But apathy (be it willful or by means of draining the populace of energy) has always been humanity's largest opponent.
as for racism; well, it's more prejudice in general, warranted or not. A lot of that simplified platform also preys on fear, and fear is one of the most effective emotions to manipulate. A big part of platforms can be summed down "[other party] wants to take away your freedom!". As seen with a lot of modern politics, platforms have shifted from "we want to give you X" to "we're not [other side] pick the lesser evil!".
The only examples I can think of that even sort of speak to this statement actively disprove it.
Mexico, for instance, makes a massive amount of America's manufacturing. There have been tariffs on Chinese steel, but I'm not sure that example really holds when China also makes so much stuff that gets shipped to America. And besides, China is the destination of almost all the world's raw materials, so if anything they'd be the bad guy in Mr Doctorow's example.
Can anyone point to a poor country that has the ability to compete with American manufacturing, but isn't being allowed to do so because of tariffs? Serious question, I'd like to know if I'm wrong.