- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Please enlighten us as to the remainder of your syllogism.
However, reintroducing capital controls in the form of taxes on cross-border capital flows would go a long way towards making currency crises of the 1997-8 sort (and the current Icelandic and looming Eastern European crises, too).
Unfettered cross-border capital flows are a bad idea. Just look at the financial crises of the last 30 years, worldwide. The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buitler
would go a long way towards making currency crises of the 1997-8 sort less likely
Of course, the subsidy would only be paid out at such time as the actual physical goods arrive in the country. Pure paper transactions wouldn't get this kind of refund, or it would be too easy to scam.
It would be an end to the current version of the transnational company. But that is hardly any loss. Cheap (comparatively, anyway) phone calls around the world would still be here. Intercontinental bulk goods shipping would still be with us. The internet would still be with us. All the infrastructure, in short, which has driven globalisation would still be with us.
Equating globalisation with Mitsubishi and Microsoft is either the height of folly or the most mendacious deception.
Phonecalls and others alike are cheap especially because they pass by internet. Internet too should be much more strictly regulated. One cannot print anything one likes in a paper either.
So when I say finish with globalisation, I mean regulation, and a lot of it, not national firewalls of the chinese kind. Infrastructure will still be there and getting better, but it won't be free to use no matter how. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Please do share that little bit with the rest of us...
No need for a separate diary. The problem with the internet, as I see it, is double: one, the hosting havens, where no body can touch them paedophiles, casino runners, spammers, pirates, hackers, spies and so on. The other, issue is the sheer size of it, which makes even websites based in the US hard to catch. For the moment I would act against the first issue. Blocking all russian, chinese, or Vanuatu IPs, to begin with. Then, overhauling the internet's administration system, which is way behind the times. This would create the framework. True regulations could be put into place then, related to traffic load control, spamming and other illegal activities, declared as such by all actors. If no agreement is possible, at least between the big actors, then the national firewall will remain the backup, extreme solution. Just like you can't travel where you like without a passport and a visa, you can't broadcast without authorization, you shouldn't be allowed to run an online casino or a spamming center targetting, say, the French market, from your Tonga hosted website. The basic principle being that there is no genuine freedom that is totally unrestricted. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The model you advocate would be a de facto legalisation of political censorship on the internet. Sorry, no points.
Advising on which broadcasts are suitable for children is a... less trivial issue. As long as it is only advisory, as long as it is reasonably transparent which organisation(s) are responsible for the labelling, and as long as the criteria they use are reasonably transparent, then I fail to see a problem. If I don't think that Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction is odious or harmful for children to view, then I am perfectly capable of ignoring a little sticker in the corner of the screen advising parental discretion (leaving quite to one side the fact that I find the Superbowl harmful viewing for anybody of any age...).
Germany and Austria have... obvious historical reasons, shall we say, for enforcing a ban on certain volumes and certain parties, and I'm inclined to go easy on that. But the time will come (has come?) when that ban needs to be re-evaluated. The threat of a Nazi coup in Germany is about similar to the risk of a revival of the Soviet Union, so one might rightfully ask why these parties are outlawed.
Try to express this opinion in France and you'll have an opportunity to see if your entire Eurotrib blogging history will save you from being labeled a Lepenist.
"There are certain parts of the fascist program - advocating genocide, committing overt discrimination, using or advocating violence as a political tool, military coup d'etats, etc. - that are and should be illegal"
The same holds for publications or broadcasts which would try the same. The same must hold for the internet. The size of the network is too much even for national authorities. Just like radio or TV, internet providers should have their number reduced and be strictly controlled as to the content passing by, because even an obligation to keep browsing history is not enough. In the end it is a technical issue. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The same holds for publications or broadcasts which would try the same. The same must hold for the internet.
No, it should not, because the internet is not a broadcast medium. It is a peer-to-peer medium, not unlike the shady corner in your local biergarten. What you are proposing is roughly equivalent to demanding that every pub installs cameras, microphones and other devices that keep record of their patrons' movements and utterances.
Because, y'know, they might be selling drugs. Or planning a Nazi coupt d'etat.
Surely, if biergartens had been monitored in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi party could have been broken up before it seized power. Doesn't that justify permanent surveillance of all biergartens? No? Why not?
Just like radio or TV, internet providers should have their number reduced and be strictly controlled as to the content passing by, because even an obligation to keep browsing history is not enough.
You do realise that by reducing the number of ISPs and subjecting them to content filtering, you will make it much, much easier for existing media monopolies to crack down on independent reporting, right?
You are substantially describing a world in which the internet becomes an advanced version of cable TV. While that's great news for Murdoch, Bush, Sarko, Corruptioni and the rest of the fascist-lites we have running around in the broadcast media, I fail to see how it would be of any value to society as a whole.
