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Unions

2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Sure. When were we crushing it as a country compared to the rest of the world with regard to technological innovation? When AT&T had enough cash to fund Bell Labs to do nothing but hang out in buildings resembling the Death Star and research whacky ideas that ended up becoming computers and lasers and cell phones. The government busting up Ma Bell was probably the single most influential commercial action that cripled our technological position in the world. Monopolies are good in many situations, and if they really suck then something else will come along to naturally break it.
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Agree to disagree. I feel that monopolies are rarely good for anyone except the shareholders of the monopoly.

I you look at the innovations you cited, none or few were actually brought to market by AT&T, and the only way they could have all that cash to play with was by over charging their customers for inferior service. As a matter of fact, monopolies generally try and crush innovation that might threaten their marketshare and as such, stifle innovation.
 
The monopoly created the base technology, and then other companies jumped on their efforts and were able to focus their efforts solely on putting it in marketable form. To me, that R&D process is a huge upside of a monopoly. I recognize the barriers to entry that monopolies create in certain instances, but in a global economy those concerns are somewhat diminished.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
The monopoly created the base technology, and then other companies jumped on their efforts and were able to focus their efforts solely on putting it in marketable form. To me, that R&D process is a huge upside of a monopoly. I recognize the barriers to entry that monopolies create in certain instances, but in a global economy those concerns are somewhat diminished.
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I am freaked out by your support of monopolies. R&D is huge in a number of industries that do not have monopolies...and in most monopolistic enterprises, they own the intellectual property, so as an inventor, you are screwed.

You do realize that for like 50 years all you could get was a black dial phone from AT&T. do you really think that the mickey mouse phone would have come out without the threat of competition or competition?

Once Ma Bell was broken up, the technological inventions skyrockedted!
 
WakeandBake said:
Someone explain to me again why it is that I am supposed to hate and want to bust up unions. Wasn't this country built and made into the world's greatest superpower by unionized workers?
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I don't have a problem with them in the private sector. Did you know they make up about 5% of the private sector employees?

Even Roosevelt had a problem with public sector unions. And don't get me started on Truman...
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
$132bn in exports of goods in June. If only every nation could suck so much!
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A whole $424 per person (without even considering COGS), holy shit we're rolling in it! If you think our production of goods is fine, that's a great opinion, but you and Obama are probably the only two who share it.
 
That's over $5000/year/person. That's pretty good.

It's even better when you consider the Euro has plummeted from about $1.43 last year to about $1.22 yesterday. That's dramatic.
 
Sgt Hulka said:
I am freaked out by your support of monopolies. R&D is huge in a number of industries that do not have monopolies...and in most monopolistic enterprises, they own the intellectual property, so as an inventor, you are screwed.

You do realize that for like 50 years all you could get was a black dial phone from AT&T. do you really think that the mickey mouse phone would have come out without the threat of competition or competition?

Once Ma Bell was broken up, the technological inventions skyrockedted!
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Sure, for the Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, and a lot of other Eses. Does the lack of US monopolies make for a great global economy? Definitely. Does it make for a great US economy? Not as much. If we are hamstringing our strongest companies, then we can't really complain when we are outproduced by other countries piggybacking off of our system.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
A whole $424 per person (without even considering COGS), holy shit we're rolling in it! If you think our production of goods is fine, that's a great opinion, but you and Obama are probably the only two who share it.
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Me, Obama, and the people buying $132bn of our stuff (and another ~$50bn of our services), thanks. Do you want to look at China's export trade in per capita terms?
 
I didn't say that. I said it didn't suck as badly as you say.

Of course you think AT&T should still be together and a monopoly.
 
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Posted without comment.
 
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You should never be satisfied, but it isn't as bad as you say.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
To be clear, I am all for moving low value-added jobs to other countries.
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And what fills the void of those jobs here? And I mean realistically given our current situation, not in some pipe-dream world where we re-tool our educational system to suddenly produce a plethora of scientific reseach PhDs, computer programmers, and machine techs.
 
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