Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Except alot of the current people blaming the United States and other Coalition countries are blaming them for things that Al-Qaeda's done.

It's the "If you weren't here, my life wouldn't be ruined" attitude that some parents adopt with their children to justify abuse.

America would have a lot more to go on if it wasn't for the almost constant stream of stories concerning the deaths of civilians.

The vast majority of these stories are coming from the fethwits over at Al-Jazeera TV, with no confirmations of death via US equipment.
Just the claims of some wackadoo Al Qaeda cameraman shooting a bunch of dead bodies.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:And as for the first one:
There's no difference between the two. They've taken up arms for a reason, and any idiotic demagogue can find a way to justify a call to arms on religious grounds or manipulate someone's misfortunes to their own gain.

*facepalm*
Okay, I guess that was another bad example. Try this one:

1) One man joins the Taliban becuase he simply views the alternative government as too corrupt.

2) The other joins because the Taliban offer food.

With the first one, you can decrease the number of fighters by kicking out the corrupt leader and cleaning up office. With the second one, you can provide a means for the villagers to feed and educate themselves, while being very public that it is YOU that is providing these opportunities. In both cases you are addressing the root of the problem. Far better than fighting the symptoms.

*facepalm*
Even working WITH both cases, it doesn't work in Middle Eastern countries due to the tribal and religious nature of the cultures.
You seem to be forgetting that quite a few of the higher ups in Al Qaeda and its partner organizations have extensive education, but still bow down and exploit the religious ideals they grew up with.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Then what the hell is the point of arguing this?

If they don't want to send forces, fine. They can piss off then when they decide THEY need help.

Well, I guess so.

That's kind of the point of an organization like NATO, EF. It's like having a group of friends you can count on reliably to have your back, IF the situation arises.

Would YOU drop everything you're doing to go and aid a friend who left you hanging?

halonachos wrote:Why can't we? A few tax deductions for domestic only businesses and a year for all factories, etc to relocate and hire new american employees, lower industrial tax to make it competitive and bada bing! Employment in america and economic turbulence in China.

Thats not how business or economics work.

halonachos wrote:Why can't we? A few tax deductions for domestic only businesses and a year for all factories, etc to relocate and hire new american employees, lower industrial tax to make it competitive and bada bing! Employment in america and economic turbulence in China.

Do you want to pay $40 for a t-shirt?

Kanluwen wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Except alot of the current people blaming the United States and other Coalition countries are blaming them for things that Al-Qaeda's done.

It's the "If you weren't here, my life wouldn't be ruined" attitude that some parents adopt with their children to justify abuse.

America would have a lot more to go on if it wasn't for the almost constant stream of stories concerning the deaths of civilians.

The vast majority of these stories are coming from the fethwits over at Al-Jazeera TV, with no confirmations of death via US equipment.
Just the claims of some wackadoo Al Qaeda cameraman shooting a bunch of dead bodies.

During my time in the Middle East I always found that Al Jazeera offered an interesting point of view and in most cases was, dare I say it , refreshingly unbiased when compared to the trash that spins out of the CNN and other media outlets.
Honestly, if you believe that every video showing every dead Afghan civilian is just a piece of Al-Qaeda's propaganda then you are severely deluded.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:And as for the first one:
There's no difference between the two. They've taken up arms for a reason, and any idiotic demagogue can find a way to justify a call to arms on religious grounds or manipulate someone's misfortunes to their own gain.

*facepalm*
Okay, I guess that was another bad example. Try this one:

1) One man joins the Taliban becuase he simply views the alternative government as too corrupt.

2) The other joins because the Taliban offer food.

With the first one, you can decrease the number of fighters by kicking out the corrupt leader and cleaning up office. With the second one, you can provide a means for the villagers to feed and educate themselves, while being very public that it is YOU that is providing these opportunities. In both cases you are addressing the root of the problem. Far better than fighting the symptoms.

*facepalm*
Even working WITH both cases, it doesn't work in Middle Eastern countries due to the tribal and religious nature of the cultures.
You seem to be forgetting that quite a few of the higher ups in Al Qaeda and its partner organizations have extensive education, but still bow down and exploit the religious ideals they grew up with.

So you're saying we shouldn't waste any time trying to figure out WHY they're attacking us, and instead just shoot the bally lot of them? Great Plan.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Then what the hell is the point of arguing this?

If they don't want to send forces, fine. They can piss off then when they decide THEY need help.

Well, I guess so.

That's kind of the point of an organization like NATO, EF. It's like having a group of friends you can count on reliably to have your back, IF the situation arises.

Would YOU drop everything you're doing to go and aid a friend who left you hanging?

Yes I would. Although that's easy to say now...

You have to realise that NATO was really supossed to be in response to situations like a full-scale invasion. Such as Soviet Russia invading West Germany or Italy. If any country of NATO was to actually face a 'real' threat to their being such as an invasion, you can damn well bet the others would come running. However, given the luaghable nature of some of NATO's miliatries that might not be saying much.

Emperors Faithful wrote:
During my time in the Middle East I always found that Al Jazeera offered an interesting point of view and in most cases was, dare I say it , refreshingly unbiased when compared to the trash that spins out of the CNN and other media outlets.
Honestly, if you believe that every video showing every dead Afghan civilian is just a piece of Al-Qaeda's propaganda then you are severely deluded.

I pay a good deal of money in order to have access to Al Jazeera. Its certainly no more biased than CNN, as you have pointed out, and it is illuminating in that sense.

Emperors Faithful wrote:
However, given the luaghable nature of some of NATO's miliatries that might not be saying much.

Still, far and away, the most powerful alliance in the world.

Primarily becuase of a select few (two?) nations. Which reminds me, does the EU ask for any sort of aid in the case of an attack on one/more of their members?

Kanluwen wrote:
it doesn't work in Middle Eastern countries due to the tribal and religious nature of the cultures.

By God, this.

Most people, and alot of our governments especially, think that 'fixing' the middle east is as easy as giving them democracy! It's not! The people of Afghanistan will always have more loyalty to their tribe than any national government ever formed. They can barely be considered a country, more like a ragtag group of tribes and factions living within a common border.

Karzai maybe a corrupt power-monger, but he's the best corrupt power-monger we can choose from.

bsohi wrote:! The people of Afghanistan will always have more loyalty to their tribe than any national government ever formed. They can barely be considered a country, more like a ragtag group of tribes and factions living within a common border.

A group of tribes that has a rather impressive strike record when it comes to dealing with "Friendly Intervention Forces".

bsohi wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
it doesn't work in Middle Eastern countries due to the tribal and religious nature of the cultures.

By God, this.

Most people, and alot of our governments especially, think that 'fixing' the middle east is as easy as giving them democracy! It's not! The people of Afghanistan will always have more loyalty to their tribe than any national government ever formed. They can barely be considered a country, more like a ragtag group of tribes and factions living within a common border.

Karzai maybe a corrupt power-monger, but he's the best corrupt power-monger we can choose from.

Fixing the middle east isn't tantamount to fixing afghanistan, a small sparsely populated desert region. It's also been done several times before, tribal loyalties aren't immortal, and men are just men. They aren't marble monoliths of generational honorable virtue where every babe and grandfather can feel ten thousand years of culture in their veins. Treating the region like something it's not is not constructive.

Afghanistan isn't even a part of the Middle East.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Emperors Faithful wrote:Primarily becuase of a select few (two?) nations.

Three. The US, the UK, and France.

dogma wrote:Afghanistan isn't even a part of the Middle East.

The East Middle East?

Emperors Faithful wrote:Primarily becuase of a select few (two?) nations.

Three. The US, the UK, and France.

Yes, I wondered if France counted. They haven't exactly thrown themselves at the Afghanistan situation.

They have an exceptional counter-terrorism unit.

ShumaGorath wrote:

The US army should be kept for invasions and counter-invasions, they are very good at that. But they should even try to help in other circumstances. Yes keep sending the supplies but stay out of the policing. Hypocritically I would have liked to have seen US troops in Belfast, or better yet Israelis, a month of that and the locals would have quickly realised our boys know their jobs and are not the rampaging slaughterers some like to imply.

The tone of this post implies that british troops are somehow better in the role. Given the number of incidents involving them and their disproportionate numbers in the theatre this is simply not the case.

Yes I imply that very strongly and with good reason. I dont know where you get your opinion from, but its not from anyone wearing a uniform unless they are lying to you to keep their own spirits up. Yanks like to beat the drum about being the 'best in the world' and and all that, we dont. We dont need to.
Make yourself look like someone worth speaking the truth to, then go to a US soldier who has actually served alongside European soldiery, excepting the Spanish and Italians, and ask on the quiet what its really like.

The US soldier is well equipped trained and brave, but the US combat doctrine leaves a lot to be desired. This is normally a fault of people far higher up the chain. Besides even wirth the fething misery of political ciorrectness creeping into our military the quality is still there. There is a definate skill in taking fire without spamming fire back, peace keeping involves casualties without reply. the US hasnt learned that lesson lose a soldier to a sniper, the block the sniper is from gets smacked. sometimes you have to take the hit and deal with the priblem another way.
The idea that if you kill one of us we will flatten you is a leaf they have taken from Israel. In case you havent noticed Israeli militasry policing is not successful, things are as bad as ever no matter how many districts they reduce to rubble. Its a never ending cycle that can only end in total destruction. That is not the way forward.

Da Boss wrote:I don't think troops were the answer in Northern Ireland, and I think that's a lesson the british government learned to their credit. Political solution is working much better.

(Feel free to disagree of course)

I agree with almost everything you say Boss, particularly with regards to the whole "neutral" thing... whats that all about eh? For example, even though im not a man of faith i=I have always admired devout religious people over fence sitting fethers that just cant make their mind up! Pick a team is my motto, even if they arent mine!

Regards this though, i feel i must disagree. Im something of an expert (if i do say so myself) with regards to the complex troubled history of Ireland, simply because i was paid to learn about it for a great deal of time and then i did a lengthy tour of duty over in South Armagh, known as "Bandit Country" to the visiting British soldiers at the time!

Aside from all of the military based books i read on the matter, one of the better books i thought for learning about the troubles was a non military book, simply entitled "Ireland, a concise History" i found the book here... (mine is the 1985 edition)

http://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Ireland-Maire-OBrien/dp/0517145189

Anyway, cut a long story short, The team behind the book are uniquely qualifed (i feel) and they summed up brilliantly at the end of the book, Marie O Brien is the daughter of Sean Mac Entee, veteran of the rising of 1916 and deputy prime minister in successive governments, and her husband has a long distinguished career in the Irish Foreign service. Excuse the wall of text im just copying it out of my book here.

"In general, after the dual ceasefire, as before it, the alternatives for the future of Northern Ireland remain stark and forbidding. There appear to be only two reasonable prognostications for Northern Ireland, one uninviting, the other terrifying.

The uninviting one is the indefinate continuation of direct rule from Britain against as much resistance on the part of the IRA as they can muster, quite wide support internally from a large section of the Catholic population and externally from Irish Americans, and some support although considerablly less, from the Republic.

The terrifying one, at least for Irish people, is the British disengagement, which is the primary objective of the IRA. It can be predicted with a probability amounting almost to certainty, hat British disengagement would lead to complete civil war in Northern Ireland. The process had already begun in August 1969, but now nothing would stop the spread of the blaze.The protestant majority would attempt to impose its own agenda through its own security forces, and the Catholic areas would of course resist. The casualties in a week would likely exceed the last 15 years of violence and large numbers of people both Catholic and Protestant would be rendered homeless, with a new border in place and a homogenous population, Catholic and Protestant on both sides.

Those which call on Britain to unite Ireland are basically asking for something that do not have the power to deliver. We do not believe that Britain will abandon Northern Ireland during the present century, and it is possible that a eventually a solution may present itself.

The point is mate, the British army HAD to be there to stop the two sides ripping each other apart. Im well aware that there was some complicity and some covert assistance given by some motivated parties to the prod side, but generally, the army was doing its best to remain as neutral as possible. Certainly the working class lads recruited to go over there for 6 months at a time, we had no interest in sectarianism or religion, we just went to do our jobs. And one of the things that sickened me was that of course, when i was one of the boots on the ground, you would protect Catholics from Prods and Prods from Catholics with equal vigor, but the pro IRA lot never seemed to understand it and they were happy to put a bullet in an Ignorant working class teenager from Liverpool as a result of it.

As usual the average fighting age (16-30) male involved in these type of things seem to know very little about what they are actually fighting for, they just replace knowledge with zeal and rage. And their parents gift them that.

Needless to say 90% of British servicemen would be just as disgusted by a baying mob throwing rocks at a Catholic school as a Protestant one. The whole Sectarian thing was irrelevant to the great many of us.

Of course, talks is the way forward, but when some nutter wants to burn a school down because it happens to be full of "Taigs" or "Fenian-Bastards" then you need to take some action!

I think the whole problem would have been better sorted if we just had American servicemen go and peace keep instead of the Brits that the IRA have such a hatred for, but then that might piss off the Prods and draw just as many accusations of collusion... maybe we should have asked the Belgians to go or something!?

Here is to hoping the peace process lasts... the cynic in me wonders if the brain washed bigots on both sides will ever be able to make it work.

Lets wait and see....

Kanluwen, while I have many sympathies with your stance, some of it is a bit rich coming from our cousins across the sea.

Kanluwen wrote:
I've always thought of it as pretty black and white:
Mujahadeen?
Freedom fighters, even if being used as proxies in the Cold War.
Al-Qaeda?
Terrorists.

I never said the Mujahadeen were saints Shuma, but they were 'freedom fighters' in the sense of the term as it's used.
The real problem in making a distinction between freedom fighters and terrorists is the ideology and the general tactics involved.

While freedom fighters do resort to the same general tactics as terrorists(insurgency strikes, etc) they tend to restrict them towards collaborators and the so-called enemies.
Terrorists target anyone and anything they can hit.

Both used/are using the same tactics. Al-Qaeda see anyone not resisting the occupying forces are collaborators and as such are legitimate targets. We should not label anyone over there as either Terrorists or Freedom Fighters because they are the same thing, just seen from different perspectives.

My opinion is that we had no right to go into Afghanistan, as the then titular gov't had done nothing to anyone outside their own country. History has shown that no 'alien' (and by that I mean originating from outside Afghanistan) force has ever controlled the area. We attacked an 'innocent' bystander who, while not being exacly angels, had no involvement in the conflict at hand.

Al-Qaeda may have had bases within their borders, but they had never commited illegal acts within them. There was no legal right for the Taliban to deport et-al to the USA. I seem to remember a similar situation with the IRA fund raisers in the States. The UK asked the American Gov't to stop them and we were politely told that as they had done nothing illegal, the American authorities would do nothing to stop or curb their activities, even though there was a direct link between the funds raised and the ability of the IRA to maintain operations (if not in the physical sense, certainly in the moral 'we have recognition from abroad' sense. To the Brits the IRA were terrorists, but to a significant proportion of the US they were freedom fighters against the British oppressors. So who's right?

Are you suggesting that the UK should then have invaded the states in order to stop the funding?

The local afghan populace is stuck in a hard place, on one side there are trigger happy forces on one side and fanatics on the other, and they can not see which one is better for them. When you have things like US civilian bodyguards indescriminately firing into a crowd and the US Gov't refusing to hand them over to Afghan courts, I can see why some people are preferring to stick with resistance forces.

Invasion was never the right answer.

Andrew

Great post Mattym, I take your point completely.
You're dead right that troops were needed for the police action in the North, I wasn't thinking when I implied they weren't. What I meant, and should have been more careful to say, was that an "afganistan style" (like, overtly military) troop deployment wouldn't have worked. The troops that were there were there as police. I think the britiish army are fantastic at that sort of work, and have tonnes of respect for the poor sods who had to do the work you did up North. I also have to agree that total independance or direct british rule would kinda suck, and I'm happy that things are going a different route. Anyway, hope that made my POV clearer- my first post was a bit unclear and dumb.

There are differences between the old US/UK/Northern Ireland situation and the US/UK/Taliban/Al Qaeda situation.

1. The UK was able to deal with the USA through diplomacy. There was no effective diplomacy possible between USA and Taliban.

2. The US supporters of the IRA were private citizens. Al Quaeda were supported by the titular government.

The invasion could have been made to work properly if the border to Pakistan had been sealed off to prevent the Al Quaeda and Taliban setting up in the tribal North-West provinces.

As this was not done we now have the problem of stopping them from destabilising Pakistan. We can't really get out of Afghanistan or the Taliban/Al Quaeda will be able to escape the Pakistani authorities' counter-measures by moving back into Afghanistan.

Kilkrazy wrote:There are differences between the old US/UK/Northern Ireland situation and the US/UK/Taliban/Al Qaeda situation.

1. The UK was able to deal with the USA through diplomacy. There was no effective diplomacy possible between USA and Taliban.

2. The US supporters of the IRA were private citizens. Al Quaeda were supported by the titular government.

The invasion could have been made to work properly if the border to Pakistan had been sealed off to prevent the Al Quaeda and Taliban setting up in the tribal North-West provinces.

As this was not done we now have the problem of stopping them from destabilising Pakistan. We can't really get out of Afghanistan or the Taliban/Al Quaeda will be able to escape the Pakistani authorities' counter-measures by moving back into Afghanistan.

I concur but there was a third pressing point.

3. The US supporters of the IRA were private citizens in safety donating to a cause out of ignorance. Al Quaeda are supported by people with full support for the methodologies of terror.

Frankly what killed the IRA was 9/11, not just the support Bush gave us in return for our backing but mostly because all but a handful of extreme racists understood that day that there was nothing heroic about terrorism. The few remaining fanatics shut up out of peer pressure, much of it from within the Irish American community.

The IRA was defeated by a combination of our security forces and by bringing them to the negotiating table to conclude the Belfast Agreement in 1999.

The Eire government were also involved and were got to drop their constitutional clause calling for a united Ireland.

This effort simultaneously much reduced the chance of the IRA achieving their aims by force, and gave them a political stake in the governance of Northern Ireland.

Perhaps unexpectedly, extremist elements of the IRA have actually got stronger since 9/11, and the plethora of new anti-terrorism on the statute books seems to be having little effect, perhaps because it is used mainly to harass amateur photographers and people who are through to have sent their children to the wrong school.

Strange as it seems, The british goverment is more concerned about photographers.
Than thousands of illegal aliens from the same areas were fighting in. Most without any form of ID

dogma wrote:

halonachos wrote:Why can't we? A few tax deductions for domestic only businesses and a year for all factories, etc to relocate and hire new american employees, lower industrial tax to make it competitive and bada bing! Employment in america and economic turbulence in China.

Do you want to pay $40 for a t-shirt?

Some people already do, and some even pay $100 for made in china shoes as well.

The point would be that there would be no more international tax, no more shipping from nation to nation, etc. This will either balance out the loss of "cheap" labor that creates mostly inferior products(toyota, lead poisoning in foods/paint). These are all caused by the outsourcing to anonymous manufacturers who pump out a product that they are paid to pump out. The american company doesn't watch over them to much, but sells the product at a profit. Like I said though, removal of outsourcing and lowering of the industrial tax should has profound reactions in terms of quality and pricing.

Lowering the tax by 50% of what it is now increases profit of these companies and then allows the company to either hire more employees or lower the prices of their products. With an increase in american factories and the necessity of hiring employees and hiring people to watch said employees will be covered by the reduction of industrial tax. Furthermore, a tax deduction for companies that maintain factories only in the U.S will spur further want for a corporation to industrialize in the U.S along with foreign companies trying to get a taste of a lower industrial tax(wasn't canada once advertising the fact that their tax rates are lower than the U.S's?).

An increase in employment of factory workers also means more income for the areas these workers live in. A restaurant may cater to the workers and also have a profit as well as clothing stores that now see increased patronage. This means the demand will be up, but supply will also go up as more factories and companies spring up in areas around the country. Not only that, but company headquarters will be able to manage their product manufacturing closer to home than before.

There will be a price increase, but many more people will be able to afford it as they will have jobs. After all, a T-shirt may be only $7.00, but that's too much money if you don't have a job.

I really don't think competing with China in this manner is either likely or even credible. It would, in all honesty, ruin you economically.

halonachos wrote:
Some people already do, and some even pay $100 for made in china shoes as well.

Luxury items are not a part of this conversation.

halonachos wrote:
The point would be that there would be no more international tax, no more shipping from nation to nation, etc. This will either balance out the loss of "cheap" labor that creates mostly inferior products(toyota, lead poisoning in foods/paint).

You're going to include Toyota, who does a ton of manufacturing in the US, in a conversation about poor product quality as the result of outsourcing? Not the best opening point.

In any case, the only reason outsourcing occurs is the presence of employment costs (including tariffs, shipping, etc.) which are lower than those in the United States. Simply cutting corporate income tax rates, which already affect the profits of domestic companies that outsource and foreign companies that operate domestically via a branch, will have no effect on the presence of manufacturing jobs in the US. The only way to affect the net cost of labor in the US is through reductions to employer side payroll taxes, and I doubt that even that would be sufficient to overcome the Chinese/Indian/Indonesian/etc. competitive advantage.

Then we could start getting into a conversation about tariffs, or the disproportionate taxation of foreign corporation (the WTO would frown on that), but those are separate issues.

Halonachos, when you look at an economic issue you can't just rely on common knowledge. You have to look at the actual facts of international trade.

The biggest misconception is that the US manufactures very little, and exports no manufactured goods. The truth is the US is the biggest manufacturer in the world, producing about $2.5 trillion in goods each year. It is able to do this because the US focuses on high skilled, capital intensive manufacture, leaving low skilled manufacture to unskilled, capital poor nations. This is why the US is able to generate about $45k per person each year, while China produces about $3k per person.

You might increase employment by getting your citizens into basic manufacture, but you'd be cutting average incomes by at least half. Meanwhile, the parts of the world that currently rely on US high end manufacture wouldn't be able to develop those processes themselves - it'd be disastrous for them, leaving the whole thing as an all around bad idea.

No, I know that the U.S manufactures a lot of the high end stuff. However, a lot of homeless people may not have the skills necessary to manufacture the high end products and may be geared more towards shoes.

At the point of toyota, where is their HQ? It's overseas, which leads to my point. A company with an HQ on one side of the ocean and the factories on the other side have difficulty meeting each other and communication gets lost.

Also, how would the average income be cut in half? 10% of the U.S is unemployed so removing that 10% unemployment is bound to raise the average per capita income. More tax revenue is made by the new employees.

As to the other nations, I don't really care too much yet. I think America should dig itself out of it's own hole first before thinking of others. I don't major in economics of any sort, but if the reigning theory (keynesian or something like that) leads to the current results, its not a very good theory and needs to be renovated.

Yeah, cos y'know America has ALWAYS thought about everyone elses feelings before doing something.

halonachos wrote:No, I know that the U.S manufactures a lot of the high end stuff. However, a lot of homeless people may not have the skills necessary to manufacture the high end products and may be geared more towards shoes.

And? No really, do you have a point? Due to Federal minimum wage laws it will still cost a company more to hire that homeless person than it will to have some kid in India do it.

At the point of toyota, where is their HQ? It's overseas, which leads to my point. A company with an HQ on one side of the ocean and the factories on the other side have difficulty meeting each other and communication gets lost.

You're so far off base it's not even funny. You're not dealing with a quality issue here that was due to a break down in communications. Besides, in this day and age trying to claim you can't communicate with other members of a corporation with the resources of Toyota is... idiotic.

Also, how would the average income be cut in half? 10% of the U.S is unemployed so removing that 10% unemployment is bound to raise the average per capita income. More tax revenue is made by the new employees.

You cannot pay that 10% what you'd have to pay for them to be competitive. You simply can't. Unless you want to build subsidized welfare factories it won't work.

Tyyr wrote:You simply can't. Unless you want to build subsidized welfare factories it won't work.

Yep. Under the current tax system, employing that 10% at the average wage rate of equivalent workers in China would be a net tax loss via income tax credits. Even if that system were reworked to eliminate negative taxation we're still talking about people who are probably living in publicly funded housing, or homeless shelters.

Tyyr wrote:

At the point of toyota, where is their HQ? It's overseas, which leads to my point. A company with an HQ on one side of the ocean and the factories on the other side have difficulty meeting each other and communication gets lost.

You're so far off base it's not even funny. You're not dealing with a quality issue here that was due to a break down in communications. Besides, in this day and age trying to claim you can't communicate with other members of a corporation with the resources of Toyota is... idiotic.

Ever hear of a game called "telephone". Because we use technology we have a greater chance of messing things up while using the technology. Sony's online network was messed up simply due to the dates on the PS3 consoles being set incorrectly, result was hundreds of thousands being unable to play online during that time frame. I'm not saying that toyota is like a PS3, just that technology can mess up. So, no it's not idiotic.

As far as taxes goes, I don't know how tax credits work. I do believe that there is some way it can be worked out, it may be because people are too satisfied with the status quo to attempt to find a way. How has keynesian economics lasted for as long as it has without that many challengers? Again, not an economics major and I doubt wikipedia can help me with that.

halonachos wrote:
Ever hear of a game called "telephone". Because we use technology we have a greater chance of messing things up while using the technology. Sony's online network was messed up simply due to the dates on the PS3 consoles being set incorrectly, result was hundreds of thousands being unable to play online during that time frame. I'm not saying that toyota is like a PS3, just that technology can mess up. So, no it's not idiotic.

So can verbal interaction. What does the word 'locution' mean?

halonachos wrote:
As far as taxes goes, I don't know how tax credits work. I do believe that there is some way it can be worked out, it may be because people are too satisfied with the status quo to attempt to find a way. How has keynesian economics lasted for as long as it has without that many challengers? Again, not an economics major and I doubt wikipedia can help me with that.

Keynesian economics has several challengers. Read up, then you'll learn.