Obama reverses Bush policies on emissions control

[Broomstick]

NAFTA benefited Canada and Mexico far, far more than it did the US.

This is the second time you've posted this claim. Care to back it up, using some method other than repeating yourself or pretending that energy is irrelevant?

Energy isn't irrelevant, it's just not the whole story.

What sort of proof would you like? Mostly I'm engaging in this argument for amusement and not because I have a burning desire to do hours and hours of research. I'd prefer to stick mostly to the OT and not divert too deeply into NAFTA.

[Broomstick]

And really, Detroit doesn't even have to introduce hybrids to meet these requirements. They could just modify their existing vehicles to run with diesel engines from their European divisions to meet the standards.

Actually... no they can't. There's apparently some government standards that get in the way of mass adoption of diesel engines for cars (I confess I am not entirely conversant with all the details). But, again, I feel that if standards or regulations are not congruent with reality and/or causing more problems than they solve they should be changed.

But no, we can't force Americans to buy diesels, now, can we? We need to keep driving gas-powered hummers straight off the cliff!

I believe this is a moment in time when you could get Americans to buy diesels in significant numbers IF the cars were available, reliable, and you got a good PR campaign together.

Duchess, you probably don't remember this, but back in the 1970's there was a brief spate of people buying diesel cars here in the US. There were problems with adequate fuel supplies but also some other issues. The point is, US people did buy diesels in the past. I think we could convince them to try it again, possibily with more success this time.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

And these subjective criticisms are worth ... what, precisely? Upon what do you base your assessment of their engineering methods? The problem is that their designers are hamstrung by cost handicaps.

A fair point.

I've driven GM cars, Ford cars, Toyotas, and a Subaru (all for years at a time, not just a test drive). Frankly, I prefer the old domestic car interiors: the decision to make a faux stick shift on all automatic-tranny cars cost us all the middle seat, which can come in handy in a lot of circumstances. Now the domestics have followed the imports' lead on that front, which annoys me further. In any case, a lot of the attitude about differences in layout is just inflexibility: you become accustomed to a certain style of layout, and when you try to use a different one it takes a while to get used to it.

It's just that I've noticed a tremendous decline in quality as the years went on. My father had a 1977 Thunderbird for 25 years, 320,000 miles, and it was just incredible; that car ultimately saved my life when I got broadsided by a double dump-truck. I opened up the door and walked away from that accident basically unhurt. It ran forever, it once caught on fire and was running fine again the next day, etc, there wasn't much in the way of maintenance costs. Fast forward to the 1989 Chrysler New Yorker my father got to replace it, and the thing requires about $2,000 in repairs every couple of years it seems. The '86 Cadillac I drove after the accident with the '77 t-bird was better than that, but still a noticeable decline in quality that cost over four years in repairs nearly as much as we'd paid for it. My mother's Subaru held up for 200,000 miles of hard driving, her Datsun hatchkback before that for more than 200,000, but the Mercury Sable she had in between went through three alternators in five years. Then I ended up spending a lot of a summer driving a friend's dodge neon, and that thing was only a couple years old but was lurching in death rattles already.

Then I get to drive Amy's 2003 Corolla a lot, and it was beautiful, the best handling car I'd ever had a chance to enjoy, even with an automatic transmission, such perfect corner and responsiveness, I fell in love instantly and never looked back--it was like the difference between driving in a sluggish mush and driving an actual vehicle, and that was just a 4-cyl LE with nothing really special about it, and the volume and vehicle size of a 2003 Corolla frankly isn't substantially different than that of an '86 Fleetwood DeVille, for instance, with the way "compact" cars have grown. Despite being slightly comical, the Toyota Echo I have now still handles better than any American car I've ever driven, including the also nominally small Neon, and beyond that, I have no problem even with just a 4-speed automatic in passing and overtaking in almost any situation; the car only hesitates on, for example, the very steep 8% grade on the '95 north of Lewiston toward Moscow, and other situations like that, and even then I can still accelerate if I can get it up into the 4th gear on the transmission and hold it there, the only problem is that the natural speed when I do is frequently higher than the posted limit, and in the 3rd gear it doesn't have enough power to keep that limit, but that's a minor issue considering it's just a 1.5 litre.

Anyway, and yet despite all of that the best car I've driven is the Volkswagen Passat I had an opportunity to take from Chicago to Atlanta on a very long road trip; it handled perfectly, it was a real dream on the road, and I now know with absolute certainty that I'm going for a diesel Jetta the moment I have to replace the Echo and I have a secure position somewhere. That's just been my experience with vehicles to date. If Ford could start building cars like it did in 1977, to those standards of quality, they could win me back easily--but what's the chance of that? We'll get back to the moon first, and unless the big, heavy sedans are built to those standards again, but with modern diesel-hybrid combination all-electric drivetrains and options like shutting off half the cylinder bank (at least Chrysler is implementing that, I'll give them credit--what's the term for it, again?) to improve efficiency added in to make them worth their while.

It's a great idea to invest in alternative-transportation methods. But allowing the domestic auto industry to die is ridiculous, especially when we just pumped $700 billion into the banks in order to keep them from dying and we could massively improve the much more economically beneficial auto industry with a small fraction of those expenditures.

I just don't think that the future availability of portable energy will make preserving the auto industry possible.

The import manufacturers aren't selling diesel cars either: the difficulty of marketing diesel cars in America is not relevant to the idea that the domestic auto industry can't or shouldn't be saved.

Would you object to forcing American and Canadian consumers to buy diesels to improve efficiency and thus prolong our oil reserves and improve the environment, as an alternative, say?

Idealists often cause far more harm than they prevent, by advocating violent, wrenching solutions to problems and forgetting that real human beings get caught up in these upheavals. Change should always be controlled and gradual; there are no cases in history where large-scale change took place very rapidly without causing human suffering as a result.

I just don't think we have any choice but to consider large-scale change very rapidly, and accept the suffering that comes with it. We may well do much better than I've sometimes feared--but it is still going to require deeply unpleasant sacrifices and real suffering on the part of many individuals, Mike.

[phongn]

...options like shutting off half the cylinder bank (at least Chrysler is implementing that, I'll give them credit--what's the term for it, again?) to improve efficiency added in to make them worth their while.

It's called variable displacement and GM and Honda also have implementations of it.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

...options like shutting off half the cylinder bank (at least Chrysler is implementing that, I'll give them credit--what's the term for it, again?) to improve efficiency added in to make them worth their while.

It's called variable displacement and GM and Honda also have implementations of it.

I know that Daimler also experimented with it. You know (just dreaming here), you could probably get a really incredibly efficient VD 6-cyl diesel with a direct-drive electric motor on the rear axle in a plug-in diesel-electric (i.e. "series hybrid") configuration. Turn the motor with 3 cylinders at very low power for recharging over low-speed, midrange driving options, with short-distance hops all electric, and full diesel power for long distance sustained highway trips. It'd be as expensive as hell at first, of course, but I'd buy one. For a full-sized sedan, though, that would have some real potential for a combination of efficiency and power. Since there'd be no transmission, we'd see some weight savings, too--there isn't anything stopping us from having a direct drive electric motor on a rear wheel drive car, is there?

[erik_t]

As if you need six cylinders of anything for sustained high-speed driving of anything short of a semi. You just betrayed your ignorance of the issue, Marina.

[Guardsman Bass]

Am i only the second person in this thread so far who is willing to even slightly question the quasi-mercantilistic crap that Ma Deuce has been spewing? If we'd taken his advice on trade back in, say, the mid-19th century (or mid-20th century, for that matter), most of the European states would be staring down each other through 40-50% plus tariff walls - instead of the EU. That means that while you ought to do a tit-for-tat deal with your trade partners (if China throws up tariffs, we match them, and so forth), all this talk about how buying non-NAFTA products is "treasonous" is bullshit.

At some point, you have to let an unprofitable industry go if you want your economy to continue changing. This has already happened with textiles (for which I see very little bitching, even though it was among the very first true American industries in terms of factories and the like), and for all Ma Deuce's comments about how the Auto Industry represents 1 in 10 jobs and would turn the U.S. into a Depression, I have yet to see him actually provide any real source or proof for that (Reports that I have read say it is closer to an expected 3 million job loss, and that's including the Supplier Effect). Keep in mind, too, that there is more to trade than the producers; consumers actually get a benefit from trade as well, even if you notice a lot of consumers saving a certain amount of money less than a small group of workers and employers losing a lot of money.

Speaking of which, where is Master of Ossus? I'd think he'd be all over this thread, seeing as he's an economist.

[K. A. Pital]

At some point, you have to let an unprofitable industry go if you want your economy to continue changing.

In that case, healthcare should have been changed to the ruthless private "profitable" system instead of what we really have in Europe. It has not.

Keep in mind, too, that there is more to trade than the producers; consumers actually get a benefit from trade as well

The benefits from trade are marginal compared to the gross damage from rapid de-industrialization. Why? Because trade is the movement of finalized goods - sale items - to the end consumer, whose ability to buy them depends on the wage. If an entire sector collapses, the consumer no longer gets his wage, and his ability to buy the goods is diminished. What good are then those "more competitive" goods when your people are impoverished? Answer: none.

Therefore, the question of "reforming" or even "killing" an industry are very sensitive. You dont' go there guns-a-blazing with the screams of "unprofitable - let it die!".

Rapid privatization and elimination of unprofitable industries has led to even the excess deaths of many people; is that also a "benefit" of trade?

[Guardsman Bass]

At some point, you have to let an unprofitable industry go if you want your economy to continue changing.

In that case, healthcare should have been changed to the ruthless private "profitable" system instead of what we really have in Europe. It has not.

I fail to see what this has to do with trade as it pertains to health care, given that I was referring to trade (which has little to do with compensation systems for health care). For that matter, we already do a lot of trade in health care products (which is a more relevant example).

Keep in mind, too, that there is more to trade than the producers; consumers actually get a benefit from trade as well

The benefits from trade are marginal compared to the gross damage from rapid de-industrialization. Why? Because trade is the movement of finalized goods - sale items - to the end consumer,

What do you mean by "finalized goods"? Products are traded at pretty much every level of construction - the auto industry is actually a good example of this, with parts being gathered from all over the place and assembled in different countries.

whose ability to buy them depends on the wage. If an entire sector collapses, the consumer no longer gets his wage, and his ability to buy the goods is diminished.

Only if no jobs (or only drastically lower paid jobs) are made available to them that are worse than the rise in living standards from the cheaper goods. Industrialization and the automobile industry largely destroyed the business of those making horse- and ox-drawn wagons, plus the entire infrastructure of blacksmiths and so forth - are we seriously regretting that, for example?

What good are then those "more competitive" goods when your people are impoverished? Answer: none.

Would, say, $1 milk instead of $5 milk make a difference? Or any other equivalent example?

Therefore, the question of "reforming" or even "killing" an industry are very sensitive. You don't go there guns-a-blazing with the screams of "unprofitable - let it die!".

I didn't say that - I said that, at some point, you have to let an unprofitable industry go (in most cases - you can make an argument for defense industry subsidization with regards to some countries).

Rapid privatization and elimination of unprofitable industries has led to even the excess deaths of many people; is that also a "benefit" of trade?

I said nothing about "rapid privatization".

[K. A. Pital]

I fail to see what this has to do with trade as it pertains to health care, given that I was referring to trade (which has little to do with compensation systems for health care). For that matter, we already do a lot of trade in health care products (which is a more relevant example).

You were speaking about an unprofitable industry. The industry includes the process of production of goods as much as it does include trade. I presume you were talking about automobiles, right? If the industry is unprofitable, perhaps the solution is not to "gut" it, but consider the actual social damage and benefit before doing anything.

What do you mean by "finalized goods"? Products are traded at pretty much every level of construction - the auto industry is actually a good example of this, with parts being gathered from all over the place and assembled in different countries.

Assembly and production of these parts is critical to the development of the industry; including technical progress. If you simply destroy the industry, all associated workplaces, and wages, are eliminated.

Only if no jobs (or only drastically lower paid jobs) are made available to them that are worse than the rise in living standards from the cheaper goods. Industrialization and the automobile industry largely destroyed the business of those making horse- and ox-drawn wagons, plus the entire infrastructure of blacksmiths and so forth - are we seriously regretting that, for example?

Indeed. So do you see an industrial sector which can accomodate 3 million people and give them similar jobs?

Would, say, $1 milk instead of $5 milk make a difference? Or any other equivalent example?

Automobiles are not critical products, and the price difference is not that drastic. But it's nice to see food price brought as an example from someone whose nation's food subsidies maintain an entire unprofitable food industry for the sake of something called "food security".

I didn't say that - I said that, at some point, you have to let an unprofitable industry go (in most cases - you can make an argument for defense industry subsidization with regards to some countries).

Let's lead the way with the food industry and see how well that plays out. I will be delighted to see that.

I said nothing about "rapid privatization".

Privatization is relevant in the context that it enabled liqudation; it's not my point. The actual cause of impoverishment was of course not privatization par se as the factories did not suddenly stop functioning or producing, or paying wages. No. The cause was the destruction of capital assets and the wholesale destruction of "unprofitable" industries and the acceptance of "cheaper" and "more competitive" end consumption goods in all sectors of industry, from Chinese clothes to Western consumer products including food. However, this import-replacement of domestic industry just caused impoverishment and mass suffering. The industries might have been unprofitable when faring against subsidized Western goods (especially as Western nations often offer greater subsidies for agricultural goods, for example, which ruins a food industry in a poorer nation) - but within the equilibrium in the domestic market they were working.

The ultimate problem with judging everything by "profitability" is that profit is a mechanistic indicator which does not show any externalities. Therefore, using it as grounds for termination of entire industries is... well, to be frank: bullshit.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

This has already happened with textiles (for which I see very little bitching, even though it was among the very first true American industries in terms of factories and the like), and for all Ma Deuce's comments about how the Auto Industry represents 1 in 10 jobs and would turn the U.S. into a Depression, I have yet to see him actually provide any real source or proof for that (Reports that I have read say it is closer to an expected 3 million job loss, and that's including the Supplier Effect).

How was it calculated? Does this 3 million job loss include the possibility of whole sale destruction of towns? Some towns in Michigan I would imagine are pretty wholely dependent on neighbouring factories to survive. Destruction of the factories will then lead to economic collapse of the towns.

There is also another problem here. Your army itself relies heavily on vehicles and on vehicle parts for maintenance. I will not be surprised if many of the suppliers to the Big 3 also sell to the military or to say General Dynamics. You are talking about removing a crucial component to not just your economy but also to your military. To say nothing of the loss of machine tools which once destroyed will take lots of money to replicate, if even possible.

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah. And with machines, you aren't talking about some outdated crap like horses. Really, automobiles destroyed the cart industry - oh well, but we aren't talking about replacing the 3,000,000 job automobile industry with a 3,000,000 job aeromobile industry, right?

We are talking about an industrialized nation willingly fortfeiting not an obsolete, labour-intensive and un-modern industry, but a modern industry because of competition from likewise modern industries. How can anyone seriously compare that to the obsolete technology being outphased, is beyond me.

[Guardsman Bass]

Would, say, $1 milk instead of $5 milk make a difference? Or any other equivalent example?

Automobiles are not critical products, and the price difference is not that drastic. But it's nice to see food price brought as an example from someone whose nation's food subsidies maintain an entire unprofitable food industry for the sake of something called "food security".

Who said I identified with the agricultural policies of the United States?

I didn't say that - I said that, at some point, you have to let an unprofitable industry go (in most cases - you can make an argument for defense industry subsidization with regards to some countries).

Let's lead the way with the food industry and see how well that plays out. I will be delighted to see that.

I'm willing to, provided we negotiate down the subsidies and tariffs with the other big agricultural subsidizers (I'm looking at you, European Union). Want to join in?

For the record, I think that some US agricultural sector probably would survive without trade barriers - there is a lot of investment in terms of transportation networks, capital, and so forth. Obviously some of the stuff like the US cotton industry would probably be gone.

How was it calculated? Does this 3 million job loss include the possibility of whole sale destruction of towns? Some towns in Michigan I would imagine are pretty wholely dependent on neighbouring factories to survive. Destruction of the factories will then lead to economic collapse of the towns.

The authors explain the methodology before giving their results in the link I provided.

There is also another problem here. Your army itself relies heavily on vehicles and on vehicle parts for maintenance. I will not be surprised if many of the suppliers to the Big 3 also sell to the military or to say General Dynamics. You are talking about removing a crucial component to not just your economy but also to your military. To say nothing of the loss of machine tools which once destroyed will take lots of money to replicate, if even possible.

I thought the military vehicle construction was largely its own stand-alone thing nowadays (it didn't use to be). Anyone with more knowledge in the matter, feel free to correct me.

Yeah. And with machines, you aren't talking about some outdated crap like horses. Really, automobiles destroyed the cart industry - oh well, but we aren't talking about replacing the 3,000,000 job automobile industry with a 3,000,000 job aeromobile industry, right?

You're missing the point of the analogy, though - which was that while it wiped out the horse-and-cart industry, the change allowed for new development (and it doesn't have to be industry, per se) to replace that. I doubt the carting industry people saw the rise of the auto industry, for example - they were probably just as pissed off by the loss of their jobs as auto workers are of theirs.

We are talking about an industrialized nation willingly fortfeiting not an obsolete, labour-intensive and un-modern industry,

What's obsolete or "un-modern" about it, seeing as it is not only being manufactured in the present, but is an important industry (unless you think clothing is less important than cars)? The technology used in the Third World is not that different from the technology used (or that would be used) in the First World if the labor costs were cheaper.

You seem to have this mental hierarchy where labor-intensive, "low-tech" industries are somehow less important than industries that require a lot of technology. Why? Is the video game manufacturing industry more important than textiles, or the computer manufacturing industry more important than making steel?

[Darth Wong]

NAFTA benefited Canada and Mexico far, far more than it did the US.

This is the second time you've posted this claim. Care to back it up, using some method other than repeating yourself or pretending that energy is irrelevant?

Energy isn't irrelevant, it's just not the whole story.

It's also a virtual basic necessity of life (remember, it's not just gasoline; it's also the natural gas that people use in order to heat their homes), whereas many other products fall more into the categories of luxury or convenience items.

What sort of proof would you like? Mostly I'm engaging in this argument for amusement and not because I have a burning desire to do hours and hours of research. I'd prefer to stick mostly to the OT and not divert too deeply into NAFTA.

What sort of proof would I like? Well, anything more substantive than "because I say so" would be a nice start.

[Darth Wong]

It's just that I've noticed a tremendous decline in quality as the years went on. My father had a 1977 Thunderbird for 25 years, 320,000 miles, and it was just incredible; that car ultimately saved my life when I got broadsided by a double dump-truck. I opened up the door and walked away from that accident basically unhurt. It ran forever, it once caught on fire and was running fine again the next day, etc, there wasn't much in the way of maintenance costs. Fast forward to the 1989 Chrysler New Yorker my father got to replace it, and the thing requires about $2,000 in repairs every couple of years it seems. The '86 Cadillac I drove after the accident with the '77 t-bird was better than that, but still a noticeable decline in quality that cost over four years in repairs nearly as much as we'd paid for it. My mother's Subaru held up for 200,000 miles of hard driving, her Datsun hatchkback before that for more than 200,000, but the Mercury Sable she had in between went through three alternators in five years. Then I ended up spending a lot of a summer driving a friend's dodge neon, and that thing was only a couple years old but was lurching in death rattles already.

And again, what do you expect when you force designers to cut $2000 of production costs out of every car design? Where do you think they'll take it out of? They're not going to completely remove an entire feature, and people won't stand for engines that are much smaller than competitors' engines, so they will cut a little bit of quality out of components all over the place. They'll also squeeze their suppliers on cost, thus forcing them to make similar compromises. If you took those Camry designers and told them to slice out $2000 of production costs, what effect do you think that would have on the car's perceived quality?

Then I get to drive Amy's 2003 Corolla a lot, and it was beautiful, the best handling car I'd ever had a chance to enjoy, even with an automatic transmission, such perfect corner and responsiveness, I fell in love instantly and never looked back--it was like the difference between driving in a sluggish mush and driving an actual vehicle, and that was just a 4-cyl LE with nothing really special about it, and the volume and vehicle size of a 2003 Corolla frankly isn't substantially different than that of an '86 Fleetwood DeVille, for instance, with the way "compact" cars have grown. Despite being slightly comical, the Toyota Echo I have now still handles better than any American car I've ever driven, including the also nominally small Neon, and beyond that, I have no problem even with just a 4-speed automatic in passing and overtaking in almost any situation; the car only hesitates on, for example, the very steep 8% grade on the '95 north of Lewiston toward Moscow, and other situations like that, and even then I can still accelerate if I can get it up into the 4th gear on the transmission and hold it there, the only problem is that the natural speed when I do is frequently higher than the posted limit, and in the 3rd gear it doesn't have enough power to keep that limit, but that's a minor issue considering it's just a 1.5 litre.

Frankly, despite what auto magazines may lead you to believe, the majority of car buyers don't really care that much about handling. If they did, massive top-heavy SUVs and pickup trucks wouldn't be so popular. Most people care more about utilitarian matters, like how useful it is for their daily routine. If I had to choose between a car with really tight handling and a car with better winter stability, I'd take the latter. As it is, my Subaru was clearly designed by somebody who never experienced a Canadian winter. It may have AWD, but there is way too little wheel-well clearance to deal with the massive snow and ice buildup that typically occurs when driving in winter conditions in this city. The wheels routinely scrape against ice lodged inside the wheel-well. By reducing the clearance, they lower the chassis and tighten up the handling, at the expense of winter driving conditions.

Anyway, and yet despite all of that the best car I've driven is the Volkswagen Passat I had an opportunity to take from Chicago to Atlanta on a very long road trip; it handled perfectly, it was a real dream on the road, and I now know with absolute certainty that I'm going for a diesel Jetta the moment I have to replace the Echo and I have a secure position somewhere. That's just been my experience with vehicles to date. If Ford could start building cars like it did in 1977, to those standards of quality, they could win me back easily--but what's the chance of that? We'll get back to the moon first, and unless the big, heavy sedans are built to those standards again, but with modern diesel-hybrid combination all-electric drivetrains and options like shutting off half the cylinder bank (at least Chrysler is implementing that, I'll give them credit--what's the term for it, again?) to improve efficiency added in to make them worth their while.

Oh puh-lease, their quality would instantly shoot up by subjectively enormous amounts if the designers suddenly had an extra $2000 to work with on every car.

It's a great idea to invest in alternative-transportation methods. But allowing the domestic auto industry to die is ridiculous, especially when we just pumped $700 billion into the banks in order to keep them from dying and we could massively improve the much more economically beneficial auto industry with a small fraction of those expenditures.

I just don't think that the future availability of portable energy will make preserving the auto industry possible.

There will always be an auto industry, even if it's electric cars. It may be smaller than it is today. It may be different than it is today. Such predictions are difficult to make. But it will not disappear completely, and it would be foolish to allow the domestic auto industry to die now, especially when we don't even know how long these changes will take.

The import manufacturers aren't selling diesel cars either: the difficulty of marketing diesel cars in America is not relevant to the idea that the domestic auto industry can't or shouldn't be saved.

Would you object to forcing American and Canadian consumers to buy diesels to improve efficiency and thus prolong our oil reserves and improve the environment, as an alternative, say?

Why would we do this, when we could easily achieve a much larger increase in efficiency without the need for huge infrastructure changes by simply pushing people to buy smaller vehicles, which are cheaper for other reasons anyway? Every day, I see roads full of people driving huge vehicles and they're just commuting to work. No matter what kind of engine you use, it's wasteful to repeatedly accelerate and decelerate a hulking three ton mass, just so one status-obsessed asshole can feel like a big man while he drives to the office.

Idealists often cause far more harm than they prevent, by advocating violent, wrenching solutions to problems and forgetting that real human beings get caught up in these upheavals. Change should always be controlled and gradual; there are no cases in history where large-scale change took place very rapidly without causing human suffering as a result.

I just don't think we have any choice but to consider large-scale change very rapidly, and accept the suffering that comes with it. We may well do much better than I've sometimes feared--but it is still going to require deeply unpleasant sacrifices and real suffering on the part of many individuals, Mike.

And so you propose to increase the magnitude of that suffering in order to get it over with? How does that make sense? It's bad enough that we have such troubles on the horizon, but your idea of increasing peoples' misery in order to more quickly reach the Promised Land is not reasonable.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The authors explain the methodology before giving their results in the link I provided.

So far as I have read, the article said little of the methodology, beyond citing some unnamed model I am not familiar with.

What's obsolete or "un-modern" about it, seeing as it is not only being manufactured in the present, but is an important industry (unless you think clothing is less important than cars)? The technology used in the Third World is not that different from the technology used (or that would be used) in the First World if the labor costs were cheaper.

Technology in the Third WOrld isn't much different only if the said First World country brings in the tools. And for the most part, Japan still manufactures its own machine tools for its factories.

You seem to have this mental hierarchy where labor-intensive, "low-tech" industries are somehow less important than industries that require a lot of technology. Why? Is the video game manufacturing industry more important than textiles, or the computer manufacturing industry more important than making steel?

Because for "high tech" industries, knowledge is in the form of print, people. "Low tech" industries on the other hand, once destroyed, aren't easily revived because the technology is permanently lost. Just like why there is no way that B-52s can ever be manufactured any more because the machine tools have been destroyed.

By the way, these "low tech" industries require substantial investment into research on materials and designs. By no means are they even cheap. Destroying them means destroying all the investment put into them, and that ranks in the order of billions to trillions.

[Guardsman Bass]

What sort of proof would I like? Well, anything more substantive than "because I say so" would be a nice start.

In absolute terms with regards to the value of the increase in exports, US exports to Mexico and Canada went from $142 billion in 1993 to $364.6 billion in 2007. Exports from Canada and Mexico to the US over that same period went from $151 billion in 1993 to $501 billion in 2007. That's cited from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, although the specific document in question ("NAFTA Analysis 2007") isn't working (another page cited it, and I followed it to the USTR website). While the US may have gotten less in terms of exports than Mexico-Canada did, it still got a major increase in exports and trade, period.

Here's a rebuttal of some of the major points made in the NAFTA Analysis 2007 document, including part of the point above.

[K. A. Pital]

You seem to have this mental hierarchy where labor-intensive, "low-tech" industries are somehow less important than industries that require a lot of technology. Why?

Ever heard of the Ricardian paradox? Like, high-technology industries pushing the progress while low-tech industries, unreliant on science and requiring less capital investment, leading to the degradation and decline of national economy, turning the state into a "resource appendage" to feed the technologically developed and superior nations?

So yes, willingly fortfeiting an industry which is not obsolete is strange; it should be first determined that the industry is obsolete.

And the destruction of the horsecart industry was due to, and simultaneous with (!) the rise of a technicaly superior device, the automobile - you fail to acknowledge a critical point, automobiles are not being currently outcompeted by vastly superior transportation means. Moreover, the potential for technical progress of the automotive transport is great whilst the cart at the time of obsoletion simply did not have any modernization resource left. At all.

So your example is a strawman.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

As if you need six cylinders of anything for sustained high-speed driving of anything short of a semi. You just betrayed your ignorance of the issue, Marina.

I didn't claim to have any specialized knowledge of automobile manufacture and capabilities, did I, Erik? So of course I'm ignorant, and merely speculating on what I thought would be ideal. I was thinking of the power output required to keep the batteries constantly charged so that speed would not be hampered by a situation where the batteries had drained down to the point only the engine was providing electricity, but the demands of maintaining speed under normal conditions (i.e. with some situations of acceleration) would exceed the capacity of the engine alone to provide.

Am I to then understand that this is not a relevant concern with modern 4-cylinder engines even for full-sized sedans? I had the (I am now assuming false) misconception that there would be an issue in a hybrid vehicle where it would normally be fitted with a 6-cyl engine, but instead had a 4-cyl and associated battery system, whereby the batteries would be gradually (even if very gradually) drawn down since the power draw for the electric motor to handle a car normally in a weight class requiring a 6-cyl engine would be greater than the generator could provide, ultimately reaching a point where only the generator-produced electricity was feeding into the motor, and this would provide insufficient power to meet the performance demands of the car in a normal sustained operation situation (i.e. speeds of up to 130km/h with some periods of acceleration and some no power will be required).

Now, since I haven't studied electrical systems in any sense yet, I only have a perfunctory knowledge of this, and I certainly haven't studied how they apply to cars ('specially since I have a negative interest in professional work remotely related to the automotive industry). So I'd appreciate a detailed explaining of what's wrong with my thinking and what the actual mechanism would be. Is it simply a case of 4-cyl engines on the market today having sufficient power to meet these demands without issue?

[Guardsman Bass]

Technology in the Third WOrld isn't much different only if the said First World country brings in the tools. And for the most part, Japan still manufactures its own machine tools for its factories.

So? The origins of the technology don't really matter in the example I pointed out - if they actually using the same technology, then I don't see how you can argue that it is somehow an "inferior" industry that First World nations don't need.

Because for "high tech" industries, knowledge is in the form of print, people. "Low tech" industries on the other hand, once destroyed, aren't easily revived because the technology is permanently lost. Just like why there is no way that B-52s can ever be manufactured any more because the machine tools have been destroyed.

That doesn't change my point, which was that textiles, even if they are relatively "lower" tech and more labor-intensive, aren't less important than, say, computers manufacturing. Whether or not the capital is "human capital" or knowledge-intensive doesn't change that.

By the way, these "low tech" industries require substantial investment into research on materials and designs. By no means are they even cheap. Destroying them means destroying all the investment put into them, and that ranks in the order of billions to trillions.

I didn't say they were cheap - in fact, I was criticizing the implicit division that was made between "low tech, labor-intensive, so-called obsolete industries" that don't appear to matter if the First World loses them, versus more technology-intensive industries, which you seem to consider a much less acceptable loss.

Ever heard of the Ricardian paradox? Like, high-technology industries pushing the progress while low-tech industries, unreliant on science and requiring less capital investment, leading to the degradation and decline of national economy, turning the state into a "resource appendage" to feed the technologically developed and superior nations?

I've never heard of that in either economics or international relations.

So yes, willingly fortfeiting an industry which is not obsolete is strange; it should be first determined that the industry is obsolete.

I was disputing the point that the textile industry is somehow "obsolete". Textiles are no less important than they've ever been.

And the destruction of the horsecart industry was due to, and simultaneous with (!) the rise of a technicaly superior device, the automobile - you fail to acknowledge a critical point, automobiles are not being currently outcompeted by vastly superior transportation means.

The point was never that a specific type of industry should be outcompeted by a better form of that industry - it was that allowing the horse-and-cart industry to disappear in the face of new technology and opportunities allowed for something better to emerge due to those freed up resources. So, for example, perhaps the resources that would go to auto making, in terms of capital and so forth, go to new health care technology. Or new electronics. Or whatever.

Moreover, the potential for technical progress of the automotive transport is great whilst the cart at the time of obsoletion simply did not have any modernization resource left. At all.

I'm not sure entirely what you are getting at. Are you saying that it was okay for the cart-and-horse industry to be allowed to go extinct, but the auto industry is not, because there are more technical advancement opportunities involved with the auto industry?

I think you're missing the meaning of what I'm arguing, because you're looking back into history and seeing that the auto industry did emerge to supplant the horse-and-cart industry in whole, and turn out to be a much better situation for everyone because of it. But they didn't know, back then, that the auto industry would turn out to be the better situation in the end - they could have easily tried to subsidize the horse-and-cart industry had the governmental tools existed for doing so.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Well, Mike, would you object to the companies coming under direct state-control so that their profit or lack thereof becomes irrelevant and they are devoted to using their cash flow to forced reinvestment in rapidly development new technologies in their fields and implementing them? Simultaneously maintaining the old industry for long enough to carry us over into the new one through state ownership and directed development, in short. It is of course even under Obama implausible because of the socialist overtones, but it is I think a reasonable response to your objections on the practicality of the shift.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

So? The origins of the technology don't really matter in the example I pointed out - if they actually using the same technology, then I don't see how you can argue that it is somehow an "inferior" industry that First World nations don't need.

Yes it does. Because the said countries cannot manufacture the spare parts. When the First world company packs their bags and go, and the said industry in that country disappears permanently and there is no way for said country to ever revive it again. The big important difference between a First World and a Third World is that the First World retains the technology to replicate parts, while the Third World cannot.

That doesn't change my point, which was that textiles, even if they are relatively "lower" tech and more labor-intensive, aren't less important than, say, computers manufacturing. Whether or not the capital is "human capital" or knowledge-intensive doesn't change that.

Because Textiles require less capital investment in way of research or anything vis a vis automobile manufacturing. So they rank less in terms of importance anyway because they don't need as much capital to function. On the other hand, manufacturing cars, steel etc. are extremely capital intensive. Reviving them is a mountain of work.

And with regards to computer manufacturing it doesn't matter. Your country ceded the crown for electronics manufacturing crown a long time ago. So discussing about computer manufacturing is moot. In fact, some Dell plants and maybe one or two other plants are all that is left. Probably gone at this rate you guys go trashing one plant after another. You guys GUTTED that industry yourselves. And there's a big difference too. Your computer companies are healthy and they relocated most of their operations off-shore. Quite unlike the current state of your automobile companies that had to contend with labour issues, and what not.

I didn't say they were cheap - in fact, I was criticizing the implicit division that was made between "low tech, labor-intensive, so-called obsolete industries" that don't appear to matter if the First World loses them, versus more technology-intensive industries, which you seem to consider a much less acceptable loss.

Your textile is a red herring. The capital investment required to keep that going is an order of magnitude less than the automobile. WHich is why that has still managed to survive in some parts of the country. Your automobile industry will collapse outright and vanish.

[Master of Ossus]

Well, Mike, would you object to the companies coming under direct state-control so that their profit or lack thereof becomes irrelevant and they are devoted to using their cash flow to forced reinvestment in rapidly development new technologies in their fields and implementing them? Simultaneously maintaining the old industry for long enough to carry us over into the new one through state ownership and directed development, in short. It is of course even under Obama implausible because of the socialist overtones, but it is I think a reasonable response to your objections on the practicality of the shift.

Nationalizing a company doesn't make its "profit or lack thereof" irrelevant. It just amortizes it across society so instead of people like employees, shareholders and customers paying the price all taxpayers do (or, conversely, if it's profitable then you could argue that the government and thus the taxpayers derive the benefits of ownership from it).

More to the point: do you really think that the US government would run Ford Motor Company better than Ford does? As far as I can tell, they might have more bargaining power with the unions--that would be a huge advantage--but would that be sufficient to overcome any issues they would have with inexperience in managing production lines, engineering, etc.? I don't know the answer.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Nationalizing a company doesn't make its "profit or lack thereof" irrelevant. It just amortizes it across society so instead of people like employees, shareholders and customers paying the price all taxpayers do (or, conversely, if it's profitable then you could argue that the government and thus the taxpayers derive the benefits of ownership from it).

More to the point: do you really think that the US government would run Ford Motor Company better than Ford does? As far as I can tell, they might have more bargaining power with the unions--that would be a huge advantage--but would that be sufficient to overcome any issues they would have with inexperience in managing production lines, engineering, etc.? I don't know the answer.

No, I just think it would let the government, via control of the auto industry by fiat, forcibly introduce new technologies into production system via legislation. I do not expect it to be more efficient in the least in terms of how the corporation is run; I am just thinking that it may accomplish the goal of developing a massive "green car" industry, if you will, while still preserving the existing industry long enough to keep th economy from collapsing.

[Master of Ossus]

No, I just think it would let the government, via control of the auto industry by fiat, forcibly introduce new technologies into production system via legislation. I do not expect it to be more efficient in the least in terms of how the corporation is run; I am just thinking that it may accomplish the goal of developing a massive "green car" industry, if you will, while still preserving the existing industry long enough to keep th economy from collapsing.

If you want to introduce tech through legislation then just pass the legislation. There's no need to nationalize. In fact, passing legislation directly would be more effective since it would presumably affect foreign car companies that do business in the US (all cars in the US must have XYZ installed by 2010). If you nationalize the companies and do something like, "Fine, we'll pay your losses provided that you introduce all of these eco-friendly measures to your cars," then you're almost certainly just handing even more competitive advantages to foreign car makers that don't have to deal with implementing your new measures.