351–360 of 380 posts
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What subsidies for gasoline? Here we constantly fight over taxes on gasoline.
I think he just means that in relative terms gas taxes are lower in the US - but you’re right, there is no subsidy.
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I think he just means that in relative terms gas taxes are lower in the US - but you’re right, there is no subsidy.
Perhaps not today, but an argument could be made that a whole lot of tax money has been spent over the last several decades to make sure that middle east oil came to the US.
Sent in a FOIA for the report, so we'll see what exceptions they were claiming, if they actually claim it as non-disclosable under FOIA law. Also interesting that the WHPSEC statement[3] notes that Trump is willing to abandon plans to leave if unspecified goals are met in negotiations.
Edit: A conservative think tank recently complained about the UPU and drugs as well: https://www.aei.org/multimedia/universal-postal-union-and-ma...
[1] https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Universal_Postal_Union_me... [3] https://www.ems.post/en/about-us-contacts/about-us [4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-pr...
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The idea of free trade/globalization is everyone benefiting from the efficiency of each place doing the work it can do most efficiently. Iowa corn and Swiss fine machinery and Arab oil and all sorts of things where one place can do something better and cheaper because of the nature of the place. Poverty (cheap labor) and treaties (cheap postage) shouldn't be the drivers of this efficiency because they aren't caused b…
But the issue here is not the differential in efficiencies. It's China receiving subsidies from the US because it was considered a developing country in 1969. It's not anymore, it's a global superpower now, it can pay its own postage.
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Globalization is about an even playing field, not one-sided concessions and subsidies
Globalization is a hegemonic project of the West, best understood as a means to transfer capital from the economic peripheries to the imperial core, and has tended to wreak havoc on developing countries that have exposed themselves to it. China has been very sensible to ignore the dogma about free trade and to exploit weaknesses and loopholes in trade treaties when they find them.
Please show your evidence that global trade is a zero sum game and that the "imperial core" has reaped all the benefits. Not one example of a singular country (sure, there are some losers for a variety of reasons), but for example, show us how the African continent has gotten worse due to globalization.
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> People who actually wanted to do things well... You think intermediaries (e.g. dropshippers) can't add value to a supply chain? I don't know why you'd be so uncaring about /r/entrepreneurs when these are generally just people trying to get by as best they can. Having said that, this treaty withdrawal is still a good idea.
If they provide some level of stocking and quality control, they can. Dropshippers arbitrating between amazon and aliexpress don't really provide much of that.
E.g. if a dropshipper is selling mobile phone covers at scale, and stops using supplier x because the poor quality is affecting the dropshipper's brand, this puts more pressure on the supplier than if individual end-users stopped buying their products. Same applies to all brokers. They glean great power over suppliers in this fashion, while improving the experience for end-users (prime example: Amazon).
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> 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.
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Globalization is a hegemonic project of the West, best understood as a means to transfer capital from the economic peripheries to the imperial core, and has tended to wreak havoc on developing countries that have exposed themselves to it. China has been very sensible to ignore the dogma about free trade and to exploit weaknesses and loopholes in trade treaties when they find them.
This is a total lie. The economic development of many of the poorer nations that have engaged in global trade has exploded in the last fifty years. Human development in those countries, as measured by uncountable metrics (IDH, child mortality, rates of education), has soared. Please show your evidence that global trade is a zero sum game and that the "imperial core" has reaped all the benefits. Not one example of a s…
I didn't say it was zero sum. Poorer nations have experienced some growth, and a lot of that growth has been extracted by the West. Generally, the more a developing country has embraced globalization, the worse it has been exploited. This is not a hugely controversial statement.
If you'd really like to understand the power dynamics, you'll need to do some reading. Former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz's "Globalization and its Discontents" is a good start, though a little dated now.
See you on the picket lines, comrade!
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> 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…
US and other western governments have being reviewing the UPU for years, for the distortion these rules have been causing since the explosion of e-commerce parcels. Still, the UPU has not been able to change itself fast enough, and we have arrived at this situation.
International corporation is necessary, but I believe as such each organisation should have a very well defined mission and scope. For example, why is the Universal Postal Union concerned with income redistribution? There are already other branches of UN that concern itself with foreign aid.
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The idea of free trade/globalization is everyone benefiting from the efficiency of each place doing the work it can do most efficiently. Iowa corn and Swiss fine machinery and Arab oil and all sorts of things where one place can do something better and cheaper because of the nature of the place. Poverty (cheap labor) and treaties (cheap postage) shouldn't be the drivers of this efficiency because they aren't caused b…
I’m not sure if Swiss fine machinery is the best example here. What is it about the nature of Switzerland that makes it a more natural place to create fine machinery then anywhere else? Similarly, using American corn as an example of how free trade should work is pretty underhanded. There’s a ridiculous amount of subsidies there, and the US doesn’t have any qualms with dumping the resulting product on international m…
It is both positive- and negative- feedback. There are lots of things Switzerland doesn't have which makes it specialize in the things it does – that concentration of specialization is it's own efficiency generator.
