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US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

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Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#331

Post by justinmchase »

icebraining wrote: post #329
justinmchase wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you successfully debunked it. You asserted without merit that working in sweatshops is better than subsistence farming, this is both false and a false dichotomy.

It wasn't me, but in any case, that was just an example; even if untrue, it doesn't invalidate the point that choice is the important part.

What about slave labor? Child labor? Should corporations have these choices available to them? If not, why not?

If the reason is ethical than why would we support sweatshop labor, or any other exploitative labor?

What exploited people need is not sweatshop jobs but access to capital and education. Invest in them, do not exploit them.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#332

Post by zanny »

notfromhere wrote: post #237
bluGill wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The climate and soils in Iowa make it a great place to grow corn - even without subsidies farmers would grow corn in Iowa. Despite a much lower cost of labor in other countries Iowa can still compete well in the world markets because corn grows so much better. There is probably no advantage to making machines in Switzerland that you couldn't duplicate in Iowa, but because Iowa has the natural advantage in corn it is…

In reality though, Iowa has more than enough corn farmers for the population, and plenty of low-wage manufacturing workers to create said farm machinery there. Especially when the Swiss Franc/USD are 1:1, the Swiss would just open a plant there and finance it

At least in the theoretical example it depends on whether its more economical to build the machines closer to the farms in exchange for sacrificing farmland to do so.

Even if the world isn't so cut and dry to turn all of Iowa into one giant corn farm if Iowa is the best place to grow corn than corn production should naturally trend there, pushing internal business out that can operate elsewhere while subsuming corn production elsewhere where its less profitable.

That kind of effect is very minute on the actual day to day operating economy and decision making process of business entities involved which is why we don't just see all of Iowa turned into a corn farm, but those kind of effects have positive efficiency influence over long time frames.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#333

Post by icebraining »

justinmchase wrote: post #331
icebraining wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't me, but in any case, that was just an example; even if untrue, it doesn't invalidate the point that choice is the important part.

What about slave labor? Child labor? Should corporations have these choices available to them? If not, why not? If the reason is ethical than why would we support sweatshop labor, or any other exploitative labor? What exploited people need is not sweatshop jobs but access to capital and education. Invest in them, do not exploit them.

Child labor is much the same - a society can only ban it when it can afford to do so. An agrarian society has inevirably plenty of child labor, as part of the family. That said, you can probably ban companies from ever employing children, especially with the productivity level of current mass-production tech.

Investment in people is a red herring. You can give people choice and invest in them. Though guess what: developing countries (which is who we're talking about) don't have money to do the latter.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#334

Post by zanny »

justinmchase wrote: post #290
anonuser123456 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap labor/poverty should absolutely drive free trade, at least if you are interested in improving the human condition. People in impoverished nations choose to work in sweatshops because the alternative is so much worse; prostitution, indentured servitude, being completely destitute etc.

I disagree. This incentivizes the fostering of an environment where these are the only choices available to people. It does not help laborers anywhere in the world to exploit labor and further weaken places where labor has already organized and achieved protection. This is a fundamental failure of capitalism and a particularly harmful neo-liberal belief.

Its the only choice available because the previous means of survival was at best subsistence farming. And it isn't guaranteed to happen, but impoverished countries will never enter modern society if they are just isolated from it for labor protections sake.

The trickle of money from the pockets of capitalists into the dictators of Indochina in exchange for functionally slave labor is still better than if these countries had nothing to offer the world at all.

You would want the optimistic capitalist means to uplift the third world to be simple investment - you take a country with nothing to offer and no resources, invest money in it to educate its people and develop its infrastructure, and then you would have their substantially improved productivity to profit off.

But that has never happened on just the backs of dollars because there is no way to risk manage that kind of arrangement. It almost always comes second to bombs or prophets as a way to provide that collateral - even if the country fails to recoup the investment, you can pillage the natural resources or convert its people into adherents of your own culture. Because those acting in self interest are approaching a scenario where the other party has nothing to offer (except idle hands) and you have everything.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#335

Post by sam_goody »

oblio wrote: post #220
sam_goody wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a chat about this with one of the sellers on AliBaba. He claimed that the items are still being shipped from China, and that he is just witing Singapore / Czechoslovakia / any other developing country on the package (he said it is part of the tracking code), and he gets the benefit of the country whose code he used. He said the main reason they do that is that the laws differ as to what can be shipped from each…

> and that he is just witing Singapore / Czechoslovakia / any other developing country on the package That's impressive both because Czechoslovakia does not exist anymore, but also because Czechia is developed these days, I'm pretty sure :)

The conversation started when I got a package "from Czechoslovakia", and I couldn't figure it out.

He had given me his email address and a catalogue, so we took to talking.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#336

Post by forapurpose »

malvosenior wrote: post #261
forapurpose wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will hurt everyone, as a basic fact of economics: 1. American innovators buying components from overseas, which include many on HN and in SV, will now have to pay more, reducing their ability to innovate. 2. American consumers will have to pay more. 3. American consumers will have less innovative products, as their ability to get innovative products from other countries will be reduced, and as innovators in both t…

This is the removal of market manipulation (subsidies on shipping). We should see more innovation because the market can act freely now. For instance, now that China will have to pay for their full shipping, some product may increase in cost to the point where they could be manufactured and sold in the US, spurring innovation. The fewer artificial market constraints the better. > Finally, the greatest American innova…

> I think we can say that US democracy has not "resulted in an explosion of peace and liberty unlikely anything the world has ever seen".

But we have. Name any other period in world history that has seen the same spread of freedom and peace. There is nothing that comes close.

> The fewer artificial market constraints the better.

The Postal Treaty, and free trade and globalization in general, is a removal of artificial market constraints. Now we will return to artificial constraints at international borders.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#337

Post by gamblor956 »

gmiller123456 wrote: post #302
nil_pointer wrote: post #293

This video does a good job explaining the bad position we were in prior to leaving the treaty: https://youtu.be/DkckYLBCNfI

Even if we assume the information in that video is correct, just charging the extra $1 or so for delivery would not cause any significant number of jobs to the US. Firstly, the movement of jobs from the US to China pre-dates consumers wide availability of ordering packages straight from China. Secondly, factories in China shipping a lot of products aren't going to be sending their entire inventory in the small $2-$3…

It seems you're misundestanding the problem entirely.

Secondly, factories in China shipping a lot of products aren't going to be sending their entire inventory in the small $2-$3 packages mentioned in the video, they'll be making larger freight shipments not involving the USPS at all.

This was precisely what Chinese factories were doing: dividing up shipments to the US into smaller packages that qualified for the USPS treaty rates, because it cost them pennies per item.

The other way of assuming, is that the China cost is the exact cost, and the US cost is just extra profit to the USPS because the market will bear it.

It cost the USPS more to collect and move these packages within the US then the Chinese sender paid in total shipping costs (China and US combined). These aren't "lost profits," they're actually increased expenses that eat into actual revenues resulting in actual financial losses on Chinese parcel shipments.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#338

Post by forapurpose »

jchb wrote: post #294
forapurpose wrote: post #236

Imagine your CTO said this: 'I found a bug, therefore we should discard the entire system'; imagine it's a mature, complex, functioning system. If your CTO did it, you'd seriously doubt their leadership. The real question is, what are the outcomes we are choosing from? What is the outcome if we keep the system, and what is the outcome if we discard it? What would we replace it with - are we going to try to build a co…

> complex Complex is an understatement. The Universal Postal Union constitution (1) from 1964 is some readable 11 pages, setting the scope to "... a single postal territory for the reciprocal exchange of letter-post items" and international collaboration to improve postal services including facilitating technical assistance. Fast forward to 2018 and there is a a list of UPU activities (2) that really stretch that con…

Large institutions, and interactions between large institutions, use complex rules to manage their very many and varied activities, often called 'bureaucracy'. Nobody has found an alternative; you can't name any sizeable institution that lacks it.

We're talking about the rules governing all mail sent between all countries in the world. 200 pages seems very small to me.

And what better option do we have? If there's a simpler, equally effective one, I'm all for it.

> stretch that constitution to its limits

How does it stretch the constitution to its limits? The ratio of pages isn't high (look at any charter and then all the policies that organization makes) and is no indicator of 'stretch'. Stretching it would be violating the rules in the constitution.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#339

Post by gamblor956 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #194
pluma wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either the Brexit example is a simple mistake or you're confused about the mechanics behind it, so I'll elaborate to avoid people thinking it's a sound analogy: The Brexit referendum was non-binding, so at that point nothing legally relevant had happened yet. The UK government then decided to honour the will demonstrated by the 37.5% of the population that cast a vote in favour of leaving the EU (51.9% of the result…

> Either the Brexit example is a simple mistake or you're confused Or it is exactly what it was offered for, an example of an actual withdrawal that, once triggered, takes time, which is why the “(like Brexit)” parenthetical was placed precisely where it was but not (for instance) after the reference to th negotiate-then-cancel strategy, which wouldn't mechanically work with Brexit, as you note, and had never been su…

You still aren't getting what he's saying.

Brexit: the "exit" part takes place over two years, but is irreversible once the process begins. Re-joining the EU requires unanimous approval from all then-current members of the EU.

Postal treaty: the exit takes place over one year, and is reversible at any point during the year. Re-joining the treaty is a simple matter of re-ratifying it through your legislature (i.e., the US Congress) because all UN members are automatically entitled to join the treaty and are not subject to any sort of membership vote. (Non-UN members are subject to a vote by the membership.)

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