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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Topic: Blu-Ray players to PUNISH users who hack
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-15-2006 04:14 AM
Greg, with all deference, buddy, I know what you are saying, but your business and conglomerate America are not quite the same thing. The studios, the chains, the freakin OIL COMPANIES....they USE the government as a their lackey to forward their money-above-everything-else agenda. Your company doesn't have 200 lobbyist in the halls of congress to make sure laws are passed or changed so that you can out-source your labor to third-world countries, or worse, sell substandard products that won't pass muster here, to those third-world countries not yet sophisticated enough to have adequate restrictions (ala our great non-greedy chemical corporations who sell pesticides that are banned here because they are carcinogens, to third-world countries where they are sprayed on food crops, sometimes while workers are actually in the fields picking those crops).
And your company doesn't have lobbyist in congress plying its members with wine women and song and women and wine and boys so you can obliterate the copyright law to such and extent that there is no such thing as Public Domain which is what the law included to allow US, the Public certain rights. And now even trying to thwart the 1 copy provision.
And you're not a lending conglomerate who has armies of lobbyists in congress making sure that it can charge, just as an example, 29.9% on credit cards debt while at same time making sure their competition, the little guy in that same lending business, gets throw into jail for doing the exactly the same thing....what was that small lender called....oh yah -- the neighborhood LOANSHARK -- at least with him, you get personalized service and don't have to talk to a telephone automation system.
And your company isn't one of the huge oil companies who are making 200% profits, yet they still, somehow, getting congress to allow them to drill in virgin government lands (our lands....yours and mine and our children’s) WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A PENNY rent or tax giveback, all the while the American public is paying prices at the pump that skew their entire economic well-being.
And you're not Exxon and Mobil, giants in their own right, getting Congress, the entity that is supposed to be protecting us, to forget about any concept of anti-trust, ignore the existing anti-trust laws and let them merge so they can accumulate even more power and control so they can make even more profits at the expense of the economic pain of our entire economy. Hell, they control profits greater than the gross national product of many small countries.
Greg, these are world conglomerates which have little or no allegiance to this country, or any country for that matter -- they are world dominating entities in and of themselves with global interests and regulations that mean nothing to them. They will do whatever they need to do to make more profit, regardless if it detrimental to American and the American people. THAT'S greed -- you know, that thing about selling one's mother down the river. They will sell out the American worker to go anyplace they can make their stuff the cheapest and with the least regulation, regardless of how that job drain hurts the American economy.
If you believe for a second that these entities are operating on the same fair-and-square basis as small companies such as yours, or that they operate with an our-megacorp-just-wants-to-make-profits-like-Greg's-company-or-any-other-mom-and-pop-company ethic like you operate under or that they are in any way playing on an even playing field with your company, well, then I think you have Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE perspective which, as much as we all would love to believe that such a world exists or even existed at one time, unfortunately that world never existed and is no more a reality than the movie.
In real life, even back in that era which folks have been led to naively believe were the "good-old days" when fair was fair....the era of the Rockefeller’s and the Carnegie's, the era of sweat-shops and child labor and the United Fruit Company (which the US government was in bed with and which any historian will tell you was out and out raping Cuba of its land and was the primary motivation and cause of Castro's revolution), in real life, George Bailey's Savings and Loan would have been crushed like a bug.
What's wrong with companies wanting to make profit? What's wrong with companies wanting to have power? Nothing, when there are check and balances; any knowledge of human nature will tell you that both those carrots, when left unchecked, spiral wildly out of control and destroy much that is good in their paths. All you have to do is look at Enron and the rest of them. Profit very easily becomes greed when it is out of control or more to the point, when the power that drives it is in the hands of flawed, human beings who have no checks and balances imposed and no limitations set by law, or have so much power that they can manipulate the law because politicians can be just as flawed, just as greedy and just as corrupt as any of the rest of us.
As one of form members put it so well, when you are talking about mom-and-pop companies honestly eking out a living by creating and selling real products and the mega-world-wide conglomerates, you are not talking apples and oranges, you are talking apples and Mack truck transmissions.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-15-2006 11:30 AM
quote: Greg Mueller
Are either of you guys in business? Do you actually have the first hand experience to make these statements?
Are you trying to say that only business owners should have the right to form an educated opinion? Much of what has been written in this thread falls into the category of common knowledge and common sense.
quote: Greg Mueller
Joe if you are advocating buying foreign vehicles vs American vehicles then you are working contrary to Bobby's notion that all jobs should be kept at home.
Actually foreign auto manufacturers like Honda, BMW, Hyundai and others seem to be doing more in the way of building auto manufacturing plants here in the United States while GM and Ford are closing down many of theirs and ship them to China.
I'd rather by a Honda made by American workers and led by a Japanese CEO who makes only 1/10th the salary of his overpaid, American counterpart. At least a Japanese auto executive is going to say he makes cars for a living. A journeyman CEO in America just makes money for a living.
Lots of people love to bitch about the pay of union workers or just workers in general. How about those corporate executives? Even when they get fired for doing a terrible job, most get a "golden parachute." An average employee might expect to get escorted out by the guards.
quote: Greg Mueller
Bobby isn't Sony a Japanese company? So they are not a greedy American company cutting the throats of Americans for profit and shipping jobs of shore. They ARE off shore.
Sony isn't the problem when it comes to the bad design of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. It's the greedy American movie company guys that are forcing Sony and anyone else wanting to sell next-gen movie disc players to compromise their product -and turn it into a shitty product I don't want to buy.
The paranoia and short term greed of Hollywood studios will hurt Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sales a great deal. My feeling is a lot of folks who already have HDTV sets, but without HDCP support, will simply say, "DVD is good enough; I won't buy that new player."
As to Sony being off-shore, sure they are. Nearly the entire consumer electronics industry has been off-shored since the 1970's, thanks largely to trade policies of the Nixon adminstration and kept in effect throughout the tenures of Ford and Carter. They all had no problem with Japan dumping TV sets into the American marketplace well below the cost it took to make them.
But now Japan is getting a dose of their own medicine. Most Japanese electronics nameplates have much of their stuff made in China now. Lifetime employment at a Japanese company is no longer any guarantee for Japanese citizens. Their cost of living remains horribly high. And their population of 127 million is declining; by 2050 Japan will have only 60 million people.
Of course, we're not going to be too far behind Japan if current trends continue. There is no sign anyone will do anything to get exploding health care costs under control. Education prices are escalting far above the rate of inflation. Lots of other costs are creeping up as well. But there is relentless downward pressure on average wages. As this situation continues to worsen, I grow even more determined to never have children. Fewer Americans will have the resources to provide for them. So much for "American Family Values." We're more interested in keeping gays from marrying.
quote: Greg Mueller
The real difference is that unless you have operated a business and know how it works you can't understand why it works the way it does and where the money really goes.
Is that another way of saying, "trust the big corporate CEOs to make responsible decisions for you," or something along those lines.
Greg, this crap isn't just hurting individual American citizens. It's also doing horrible damage to American small business. Health care and workers comp insurance costs are out of control and crippling many of those businesses.
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Greg Mueller
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1687
From: Port Gamble, WA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-15-2006 02:08 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Are you trying to say that only business owners should have the right to form an educated opinion?
Not at all but if you don't know how things work you just plain don't know the facts. Then you get into spectulation and supposition and that is not an educated opinion.
quote: Bobby Henderson
Actually foreign auto manufacturers like Honda, BMW, Hyundai and others seem to be doing more in the way of building auto manufacturing plants here in the United States while GM and Ford are closing down many of theirs and ship them to China.
I think if you look closely you'll find that a lot of those parts are still made off shore and then imported to the US and assembled so they can dodge import tarrifs.
quote: Bobby Henderson
Is that another way of saying, "trust the big corporate CEOs to make responsible decisions for you," or something along those lines.
Not at all. It's just away to understand why things work the way they do instead of guessing and making assumptions that are inaccurate.
quote: Joe Redifer
Yes, American companies are far, FAR more greedy. Look at what the CEO's make on average.
They make what the market place will allow them to make. There is competition even there. Think about what the company really is. It's a whole bunch of employees. I'll go back to the Boeing example. 80,000 people in the western Washington area make their living working for Boeing. If Boeing fails to compete all those workers are out of a job. If it is determined that by hiring what you refer to as an over paid executive to make the company (through his/her knowledge or connections etc) more competative then all those 80,000 works can have a job and that's what makes the economy work. Yes those guys make a lot of money, but they do a lot to earn it. You might not think so, but it's because you don't know what they do. You are looking at it from the outside and passing judgement without knowing the facts
I really didn't want to hold a class on economics and business theory here. There's just way to many components that go into running and operating a business. If you've never been up against the challenge of running a business you have never been exposed to all the nooks and crannies involved in keeping a business alive and profitable. It's really easy to look at things from the outside (as an hourly employee) and condem business owner/operators without having a clue. Common knowledge is really common assumption which (usually) has no basis in fact.
Condemming stock holders as being fat assed lazy bastards (etc) is one of those very misunderstood assumptions. Anyone that has a retirement plan through an investment company like Edward Jones (etc etc) is a stock holder. They are common working people who are planning for their retirement. They take part of their earnings (which is usually matched to some degree by their employer) and give it to a company like Edward Jones who buys stocks for them so that in the future they will be able to retire and have a little income. They are people from all walks of life and all types of trades, incomes and so on. Anyone with a 401k plan is a stock holder. They are not just guys sitting in leather chairs smoking cigars in skyscrapers. They are common people like you and me that are planning for the future.
If you have the chance to work your way "up" at the company that you work for, you will learn more and more about the real operation of that company and these things become more and more obvious. It's not something I am willing to type a million words to describe and there's just no simple sentences that can describe it. It's very complex and usually takes years to learn and understand and sometimes cannot be understood at all
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