4 ms·

Sorry, but your post shows complete ignorance of Germany's economy and economics in general. Germany's services make up 72%+ of its GDP, while manufacturing mak

by hpo33 15y ago

Sorry, but your post shows complete ignorance of Germany's economy and economics in general. Germany's services make up 72%+ of its GDP, while manufacturing makes up 27%. Its services sector is growing, while its manufacturing sector is decreasing. That's a fact of every developed economy. A quick scan of Germany's Wikipedia entry and any other developed economy's will show you that. Deregulation has happened across every economy -- aside from North Korea and Cuba -- since the 1980s (e.g. with telecom, airlines, utilities, etc). The result of deregulation has spawned record growth in emerging economies, as well as massive growth with the newly liberalized sectors in developed economies (e.g., transportation, energy, communications). HN has a lot of smart people, but sometimes the lack of any economic wisdom combined with a holier-than-thou attitude among some posters can be a little depressing.

snth 15y ago
I downvoted you for tone. Your post would be a good one if you removed your first and last sentences.
- xiaoma 15y ago
  ditto
SkyMarshal 15y ago
>deregulation has spawned record growth in emerging economies, as well as massive growth with the newly liberalized sectors in developed economies (e.g., transportation, energy, communications). In Energy and Finance deregulation has enabled massive crisies, in the former a crisis that led to shut downs of electricity to the 4th largest and most innovative economy in the world, and in the latter a crisis the size of which hasn't been seen since the Great Depression. Is it so surprising that less than 10 years after Graham-Leach-Bliley ('99) undid the last regulations put in place after the Great Depression (Glass-Steagal) that we have another GD-level event? We had a historically unprecedented 80-year run without one of those, then some bankers get greedy, captured both political parties, pay them off, and boom, another Great Depression crisis. In telecom, it's enabling consolidation of the industry into a small cartel that controls the Internet's infrastructure and who are using their massive revenue to lobby against Net Neutrality so they can shape and toll net traffic at will, unleveling the Internet playing field that has laid so many golden eggs. On a more subjective level, it's also made tons of cheap stuff we don't really need much cheaper, but at the expense of eviscerating the middle class, grossly increasing the wealth (and hence political power) gaps between rich and poor, and making developed economies more dependent and fragile rather than robust and self-sufficient. Sometimes I think the deregulation/outsourcing mantra is the Emporer's New Clothes, and I wonder when the consensus will change to recognize that economic optimization may not be so good after all, that economic robustness is a better policy for any self-interested nation.
- tptacek 15y ago
  Telco deregulation correlates with the birth of the entire commercial Internet. The Internet of Ma Bell-era telephony was a toy for wealthy universities and government research labs. In fact, speaking as someone who helped build an ISP in the '90s, the adoption of the Internet --- as provided by indie IP-as-dialtone ISPs --- was owed entirely to the CLECs and their willingness to route numbers in hundreds of telephone prefixes down a PRI to a single server cage. The CLECs were almost literally the manifestation of telco deregulation; deregulation was practically a synonym for "let there be CLECs". I call this out this simply as an illustration of the bogosity of the logic of your entire comment.
  - Confusion 15y ago
    Wouldn't a single Baby Bell entering that market (which would be unavoidable in the face of economic viability) have lead to the same outcome?
  - Klinky 15y ago
    The government broke up the Ma Bell monopoly due to uncompetitive practices. Not until state regulation & later the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which was a regulation, not a deregulation, stipulating ILECs had to open up & allow CLECs on their networks did we see the flourishing(and eventual crash) you're talking about. The dot com bubble probably helped as anything Internet related was hot. Do you really think the Baby Bells would have wanted to share their infrastructure with competitors? Judging by how they're trying to get back in bed with each other, my guess would be no.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      It is a non sequitur argument to suggest that had telco's not been deregulated in the '80s, we would still have had CLECs building out the dialin and ISDN Internet of the '90s; that argument leaves out the fact that the RBOCs the CLECs piggybacked on were themselves the product of deregulation.
      - 15y ago

by hpo33 15y ago

snth 15y ago

I downvoted you for tone. Your post would be a good one if you removed your first and last sentences.

xiaoma 15y ago
ditto

SkyMarshal 15y ago

>deregulation has spawned record growth in emerging economies, as well as massive growth with the newly liberalized sectors in developed economies (e.g., transportation, energy, communications). In Energy and Finance deregulation has enabled massive crisies, in the former a crisis that led to shut downs of electricity to the 4th largest and most innovative economy in the world, and in the latter a crisis the size of which hasn't been seen since the Great Depression. Is it so surprising that less than 10 years after Graham-Leach-Bliley ('99) undid the last regulations put in place after the Great Depression (Glass-Steagal) that we have another GD-level event? We had a historically unprecedented 80-year run without one of those, then some bankers get greedy, captured both political parties, pay them off, and boom, another Great Depression crisis. In telecom, it's enabling consolidation of the industry into a small cartel that controls the Internet's infrastructure and who are using their massive revenue to lobby against Net Neutrality so they can shape and toll net traffic at will, unleveling the Internet playing field that has laid so many golden eggs. On a more subjective level, it's also made tons of cheap stuff we don't really need much cheaper, but at the expense of eviscerating the middle class, grossly increasing the wealth (and hence political power) gaps between rich and poor, and making developed economies more dependent and fragile rather than robust and self-sufficient. Sometimes I think the deregulation/outsourcing mantra is the Emporer's New Clothes, and I wonder when the consensus will change to recognize that economic optimization may not be so good after all, that economic robustness is a better policy for any self-interested nation.

tptacek 15y ago
Telco deregulation correlates with the birth of the entire commercial Internet. The Internet of Ma Bell-era telephony was a toy for wealthy universities and government research labs. In fact, speaking as someone who helped build an ISP in the '90s, the adoption of the Internet --- as provided by indie IP-as-dialtone ISPs --- was owed entirely to the CLECs and their willingness to route numbers in hundreds of telephone prefixes down a PRI to a single server cage. The CLECs were almost literally the manifestation of telco deregulation; deregulation was practically a synonym for "let there be CLECs". I call this out this simply as an illustration of the bogosity of the logic of your entire comment.
- Confusion 15y ago
  Wouldn't a single Baby Bell entering that market (which would be unavoidable in the face of economic viability) have lead to the same outcome?
- Klinky 15y ago
  The government broke up the Ma Bell monopoly due to uncompetitive practices. Not until state regulation & later the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which was a regulation, not a deregulation, stipulating ILECs had to open up & allow CLECs on their networks did we see the flourishing(and eventual crash) you're talking about. The dot com bubble probably helped as anything Internet related was hot. Do you really think the Baby Bells would have wanted to share their infrastructure with competitors? Judging by how they're trying to get back in bed with each other, my guess would be no.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    It is a non sequitur argument to suggest that had telco's not been deregulated in the '80s, we would still have had CLECs building out the dialin and ISDN Internet of the '90s; that argument leaves out the fact that the RBOCs the CLECs piggybacked on were themselves the product of deregulation.
    - 15y ago