While I'd generally agree that Apple is the better of the two on the privacy side it's still a false choice because you pretty much have to pick one as a regular person as things currently stand.
It becomes harder over time to function in society without a smart phone (I know this because I barely use mine and it usually lives at home but my partner runs her life off hers).
This style of argument is nonsense because deciding between Android and Apple has about a hundred unrelated but equally important consequences. There is no choice that aligns with all of your wishes (and rights).
Privacy? Just buy Apple (largely an urban legend at this point, but regardless).
Actual ownership? Just buy Android.
Security? Just buy Apple (or Pixel with GrapheneOS).
Repairability? Just buy one of these 4 Android models.
The fact that most people in the western world have two terrible companies to choose between in order to have normal life conveniences is outrageous. (Here in Europe we actually have no choices that operate under our laws!)
We need laws mandating open and interoperable interfaces and standards for all the things a modern life takes for granted: public transit, banking, digital ID, etc.
Once that's in place, we can start talking about what people are "choosing". Because currently our "choice" is at best between a rock and a hard place (or as we say in my native tongue: between plague and cholera).
Thats a lot of taxes for a few cities worth of people. Especially since Americans already paid for fibre to be laid to everyone in to US' home until the fund was embezzled.
I can't be absolutely sure, but I don't think this is true. This company [1] I'm paying 2euro/month to, AFAIK is not subsidized and never was. They already spread fiber and cable long before we joined EU (in 2007) and I had this 2euro plan since 2006.
Watching the US go from laughing at "silly EU bureaucrats making regulations" to "oh shit there's a national, privately owned AI surveillance network already" in two years is interesting.
This is a pretty reductive take. If a nation works 6 days a week, 12 hours a shift then obviously they will outcompete any nation where people work 5 days a week for 8 hours.
Protecting workers from that kind of competition seems fair. Tariffs aren't bad in itself. They are just a tool.
Unfortunately fools wielding a tool like this can cause a lot of damage, but that's true for any tool.
"If a nation works 6 days a week, 12 hours a shift then obviously they will outcompete any nation where people work 5 days a week for 8 hours." - This is not obviously true to me, can you explain why it is for you?
Although it is not a law of nature, and it is not linear across the hours.. In general if I work M-F more work will be done that if I just work on Monday morning.
"As of July 2022, more than 80 UK companies and organisations are recognised as having permanently implemented a four-day working week"
"As 50% of workers claim improved productivity during the period, the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) announced it will permanently provide a four-day workweek to its 820 employees"
So you’re saying if I work at mcdonalds 60 hours a week i’ll make more than an investment banker working 40 hours a week? Awesome, i’m filling out a job application now!
Imagine a factory line where each worker makes 10 items per hour.
In, say, China a worker doing 996 will make 720 items. Te average working hours in the Netherlands are 36 hours or so per week. Making 360 items.
As long as there is free trade the Chinese factory will simply outproduce the Dutch one since they utilise their capex better.
Obviously European workers can't be reasonably asked to compete in an open market when labour laws, salary, health inspection etc... in China are at a 1920 Dutch level.
Are you aware of comparative advantage? What matters is opportunity cost, not raw output. (Also, unit labor cost is wage per hour divided by output per hour, so the number of hours worked is not really relevant. In other words, longer hours make workers richer and not their output cheaper.)
This was worked out by David Ricardo 200 years ago. You still benefit from trade even if (granting the argument) you are worse at producing everything.
So this is just not correct.
First off a factory can run 24/7 regardless of the shift length, which is what will determine the total productivity.
Second off it assumes there are no trade offs in terms of more errors or anything else by having longer shifts.
Third off it assumes that factories in different countries are going to be equally effective with each other, instead of different nations/areas within nations specializing in certain areas.
It also ignores the economic benefits that come with having people in your nation having more leisure time, higher education, more time with children, etc. It's a very simplistic model that is also very incorrect.
Protecting Workers, I'd add a couple more; it's not smart to be fully dependent on a trading partner or partners for critical and essential products, such as food, tariffs can help ensure you maintain domestic industry. Also helping to control dumping by an aggressive trade partner to ensure a domestic industry isn't destroyed.
Eh, I think every industrial society has independently arrived at something like 36-44 hours of factory time per week (plus overtime up to a max of something like 55 hours) , simply because that's the actual optimum[1]. While tariffs might work for other stuff [2], I think you're right that they can be a narrowly applicable scalpel, but plausibly you accidentally picked a bad example.
[1] Caveats apply. For example more advanced machinery with higher stress may necessitate shorter shifts; while highly motivated creative work might permit longer shifts at times.
[2] Adam Smith -for instance- was mostly against tariffs, though he identified certain exceptions such as national defense reasons.
You seem to be assuming that productivity scales linearly with time spent working, which doesn't seem to inherently be true.
If your factory workers spend twice as long working, it's likely that more widgets will get made. I'm not certain you can generalize too far from that, though.
Right at first approximation you'd certainly think so!
At second approximation, the <Dutch> factory in that example might net make a larger number of items per hour because the workers are more alert and concentrated and make less mistakes. So the <dutch> factory and the <chinese> factory might actually be producing the same number of items.
Of course then there's more steps to this, and you need to start actually looking at systems and what you're optimizing for etc etc.
And, not everything is factories. For instance, if your operator (at eg. Smit or Mammoet) is operating a large crane that's lifting a 100 ton oil platform, maybe you'd prefer them to be wide awake and on the ball, regardless.
The comic satirizes the 2026 US tariff rationale, vs. worker protection tariffs. But I do often think about Noam Chomsky's opposition to NAFTA[0] when talking heads explain why tariffs are bad.
Just as a note: if you work 6x12 shifts, you're actually working less efficiently, because you'll be regularly fatigued, make more mistakes, need more rework, etc etc. You might end up with the same net yield as if you'd done 3x6 hour shifts.
(edit: And only if you don't fall asleep at the controls and destroy the factory first. 12 hour shifts are brutal. At least one place I know bans you the next day if you exceed 11h, for your own protection if nothing else)
(edit2: This was documented in the 1st world war when munitions factories that tried to ramp up by increasing shift durations past a certain point ended up hardly improving productivity, but did increase accident and sickness rates to the point that it was starting to hurt the war effort. )
> Protecting workers from that kind of competition seems fair. Tariffs aren't bad in itself. They are just a tool.
At the cost of consumers paying for goods/services?
Your take is as reductive as the take in the comics.
People in a nation working 5 days a week for 8 hours are getting paid less and less over time. Heck lot of people now need double shifts to make ends meet totaling up to 12 hr or even more. They can only afford a Christmas light from the nation mass producing it by working 6 days a week, 12 hr shift.
And lets not pretend this was only about protecting workers. There were multiple agendas:
1. Bring back jobs 2. Remove trade barriers between countries 3. Make US rich by collecting huge amount of tariffs
All three can't be true at the same time. If jobs are brought back then you aren't going to collect huge amount of tariffs because nothing is being produced outside. If trade barriers are removed then that comes at a cost of slashing tariffs so you can't really collect huge amount of tariffs.
The foolish reasoning highlighted in the comics is the reason there is so much trade war.
> If a nation works 6 days a week, 12 hours a shift then obviously they will outcompete any nation where people work 5 days a week for 8 hours.
If a nation has a decades-long technological lead over another nation, then obviously it will outcompete it in many industries and enjoy major advantages in trade. But somehow that advantage doesn't seem to count in your argument. Cherry-picking one side's advantages is not an analysis of international trade; it's just bias.
Unfortunately in our hyper partisan, sound bite, climate you can’t discuss the trade offs of tax policies anymore you either support the party line or you’re the enemy.
Context is important. 100% tariffs on Canada is stupid, 100% tariffs on China because we don’t want any industry dependent on a major military adversary is something worth discussing even if the answer is to not do that in the end
It would certainly help if people wouldn't believe flat-out lies.
Like, "other countries pay the tariffs."
No. They don't.
How can we have nuanced conversation about the trade-offs, if the leader of one political party blatantly lies about a fundamental detail of how tariffs work?
600% reduction in the price of drugs?
We can't even start a discussion with people who believe this. At all. They reject any information, even their own knowledge of how numbers work.
I have never met anyone who thought other countries paid the tariffs. Im sure they exist but this seems more like something retractors say to make themselves feel smarter than people in support of tariffs. People who care at all about tariffs tend to know how they work.
The president says a lot of really stupid things and those stupid things are highlighted, but that’s not indicative of the average and one of the main talking points about tariffs is that they increase costs in order to incentivize local suppliers
Merriam-Webster: "The meaning of TARIFF is a schedule of duties imposed by a government on imported or in some countries exported goods."
Apparently the dictionary is "woke."
Wikipedia: "A tariff, or import tax, is a duty imposed by a national government, customs territory, or supranational union on imports of goods and is paid by the importer."
Oxford Economics: "Tariffs are taxes imposed by a government on goods and services imported from other countries."
I initially thought it was a trick, that using Chinese chars is somehow more info dense and it saves tokens to 'think' in Chinese.
But later on it became more erratic. I still wonder if token reduction would work that way.
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