Hmm. It was not developing countries, who claimed _free trade_; it was _developed counrties_. When free trade was coming, it caused a lot of local problems - local car vendors was unhappy because of competition, local TV vendors closed their factories, etc. But it appeared to be two side weapon - and , developing countried get their reward in shape of outsourcing after adapting to this free trade. It is just payment for initial loses and disadvantages. So, it is smart - ok, wanna free trade, wanna to sell Boeings to Russia and India - be ready to move workforce there, too. Do not want free trade - be ready that Cisco, Boeing, Intel will not sell anything to this countries (and use local workforce, and pay $300 for DVD player _made in USA_ instead of paying $50 for the same one _made in China_). Some fields still have not free trade (Music Industry, for example, still have uncompetitive prices $20 for CD disk, but it is compensated by pirates so that no one is paying this $20 except americans - people pays $3 for the same thing in India or China), but be sure, it is for limited time only - after 5 years CD / 20 songs will cost $2, no matter what this fat label companies are saying and doing... Do not make unreasonable dreams - it is FREE TRADE vs CLOSED MARKET. You can not have free trade for goods and closed market for workforce. And vice versa. And you can not make long life for uncompetitive society, which makes life easy for individuals but pay huge price as a society (incompetitive workforce). No way. Other side is company structure. If companies have 80% _sales_ and 20% _Engineering_, they can not compete with new China companies with 80% Engineering and 20% sales. Just no way. It will got worst, not because of outsourcing, but because of lost of drive, wasting expenses, huge internal prices. Returning to Cisco . They was (WAS) a great company. They are (ARE) still a good company. But overall tendency is so scared that I will not bet on them too much - they lost internal drive, lost internal quality. They have a chance to became a bad company during next 5 years. China is just a simple example of growing competition. (Btw, I like an idea - I teached Cisco networking in Russia, and it was very useful for the students. ) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Boyle" <robert@tellurian.com> To: "Curtis Maurand" <curtis@maurand.com> Cc: <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 1:27 PM Subject: Re: Cisco moves even more to china.
At 02:23 PM 9/25/2004, you wrote: engagement is fair trade. Lessaiz Faire economics was tried about 100 years ago. It resulted in the Great Depression and children dying of tuberculosis in the factories. Why does anyone think it'll work today?
Curtis,
I tried to stay out of this since it isn't really on topic at all, but
your
statement above is so completely wrong that I can't let it pass without correcting it.
Actually, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which was intended to be "fair trade" in your parlance CAUSED the Great Depression, NOT free trade. Some economists particularly those of the Keynesian school wrongly (imho) see the S-H Tariff as a result of the Great Depression rather than a cause. However, all parties agree that it did nothing but prolong the depression. Properly analyzing the facts and knowing the time which is involved in passing legislation and Hoover's promises to enact the tariff if he was elected caused the capital markets to dry up when it became evident that he would win and that the tariff would be enacted. The anticipation of the act was enough to scare away the smart money from the market which caused the stock market crash of '29. The depression lasted as a result of the tariff essentially killing trade between the US and the rest of the world. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it!
Here are a few references for you:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/id/17606.htm
http://www.buyandhold.com/bh/en/education/history/2002/smoot_hawley.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/H/HawleyS1m.asp
-Robert
btw- The good news is that Bush or Kerry will loose. The bad news is that the other one of them will win. :(
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