Friday, September 28, 2007

And while we're NOT on the topic . . . .

Something completely different.

A couple of indications why large corporations are sooooooo over in the US.

First, I requested and received a trial issue of the new business magazine, Portfolio, and it arrived along with an invoice. Now, Portfolio is one of those GLOSSY, CELEBRITY ROCK STAR HEDGE FUND-types of magazines where the subjects of the articles "earn" millions of dollars annually ("earn" is such a disingenuous word to describe these titans of industry).

So anyway, received my trial issue and looked through it and was undecided about whether to go ahead and subscribe or not. Some of the articles have turned out to be OFF-THE-MARK quite abit since the latest round of sub-prime housing collapses. You know, it's okay to be wrong about some minor things if the end result is all good, but to be wrong from beginning to end, ummmm, that's not ok.

And while I'm deciding, I get a second invoice from the Portfolio magazine, saying payment is now past due on my TRIAL ISSUE, and if I don't pay up, then they may have to turn me over to a collection agency. For a magazine. On my TRIAL ISSUE, no less. Hehehe. What a bunch of morons!!! Care to guess what my decision ended up being? C-A-N-C-E-L. Being wrong on what you're writing about and then trying to scare me into paying up. . . . . uh, sure. Once again. Let me reiterate . . . . MORONS!

On the other hand, here's an example of how to do it correctly. I asked for a trial issue of Yes! magazine. They sent an invoice and a week later the magazine arrived. "Send us payment if you like the magazine and wish to subscribe". That's it. No second letter. Nothing other than "try our magazine and if you like it, we'd be happy to have you as a customer". End of story. I think I might subscribe to their magazine. Oh, and btw, their articles are well written and accurate too.


See what's wrong with big corporations today. The future in the U.S. is NOT multinational corporations who have processed everything until there's very little interaction between the customer and the organization. It's smaller companies with a personal touch for their customers and who use a little bit of good judgement as well as good business sense.


Second, everyone knows about lists, right? Once a list is made it's usually out-of-date soon afterwards. Why? Because things change. And this is more true than ever when it comes to database marketing lists. Which are SOLD from one company to another. With personal information (name, address, etc). Without permission.

So imagine my amusement this week when old Granddad gets a letter at the old homestead from some company trying to sell something. See, old Granddad has been dead for twenty-plus years. But to the company that bought that mailing list, well, they've won the MORON OF THE WEEK award. They paid for a seriously out-of-date list, and then they paid postage to mail those advertisements. And they'll be getting them returned too. Once again, congratulations to the MORONS of the week.


Btw, Lands End keeps me on their mailing list for catalogs. I like Lands End, but I haven't bought anything from them for about twenty years. Still, I get their catalogs....which go straight to the trash can....to be burned. You'd think companies would figure out with all their high tech whatsis and whosis, that they're losing money on postage if people haven't bought anything in awhile. But, they're the smart ones, aren't they.


We now return you now to your regularly scheduled programming.

ISPs to rural America: Live with dial-up

From Computerworld
by Robert Mitchell

You can't get there from here. That old New England saw is an apt metaphor for the state of high-speed rural broadband. While many telecommunications carriers are posting record profits this year, millions of U.S. homes and businesses still have no access to broadband — and that's no coincidence.

The return on equity that Wall Street demands from players in today's largely unregulated telecommunications business all but requires carriers to abandon rural America.

As population density drops outside of metropolitan areas, it's impossible for telecommunications companies or cable service providers to justify the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per mile it can cost to bring fiber to every rural community, let alone every home. The result: Today, just 17% of rural U.S. households subscribe to broadband service, according to the Government Accountability Office. And a recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says the U.S. dropped from fourth in the world in broadband penetration in 2001 to 15th place in 2006.

Communications infrastructure is widely seen as the biggest driver of economic growth, yet 21% of Americans — the nearly 60 million people who live in rural areas — are often underserved.

Kim Rossey is one of them. Soon after moving to Gilsum, N.H. (population 811), Rossey learned that he couldn't get broadband to support his Web programming business, TooCoolWebs. DSL wasn't available, and the local cable service provider wasn't interested in extending the cabling for its broadband service the three-tenths of a mile required to reach Rossey's house — even if he paid the full $7,000 cost.

Rossey ended up signing a two-year, $450-per-month contract for a T1 line that delivers 1.44Mbit/sec. of bandwidth. He pays 10 times more than the cable provider would have charged and receives one quarter of the bandwidth.

Limited options for high-speed Internet connectivity are stifling bigger rural companies too. Earlier this year, a $1 billion-plus e-commerce business was left scrambling for answers after Verizon announced that it was selling its rural telecommunications business in New England to the much smaller, less well-capitalized FairPoint Communications.

"These guys were freaking out because the only network they've been able to have up there is an [asynchronous transfer mode] network, and it's going away when Verizon leaves," says an analyst who consulted with the company and asked not to be identified. "They may have to move [to another state]."

The Internet is becoming the road to the workplace.

Rural broadband drought puts hurt on retailer

From Computerworld....(links in CW article)

By Robert L. Mitchell on Mon, 08/27/2007 - 10:36am
The lack of broadband access in rural areas isn't just hurting individuals and small businesses. Even large retail chains, which often have stores in rural shopping centers, find that they can't get online.

Consider the plight of Trans World Entertainment, which relies mostly on DSL services to link more than 1,000 music stores - including its Coconuts and f.y.e. chains - to its back-end systems. "Unfortunately, DSL isn't available everywhere yet, even in retail areas. Right now, about 17% [of store locations] can't get broadband," says CIO Robert Hinkle, noting that availability can be limited even in the major retail zones within rural areas.

TWE stores that can't get broadband service now rely on slower frame relay connections, which Hinkle admits is a less than optimal solution. "It's just too darned expensive for the speed," he says, adding that he's looking for viable alternatives.

TWE recently brought 335 new stores online as part of an acquisition. "We probably ended up with 80 stores on frame," says director of IT operations Roy Simmons, noting that the 256 Kbps frame relay circuits cost 30% more than DSL and offer a fraction of the bandwidth he'd like each store to have. TWE downloads new music and video clips to servers located in each store that play music and video trailers to customers on demand. "It chugs along," Simmons says of the download process.

Bit rates weren't the only thing that was slow about rural broadband. Even where DSL was available, slow service times meant that it was impossible to get a broadband hookup made within TWE's 30-day window. So some stores had to start out with dial-up connections. "It took about three months before we completed the DSL or frame installations," Simmons says. Getting DSL up and running, he adds, was the "longest running piece" of the project.

This was just one of the stories that didn't make it into my column this week about the sorry state of rural broadband. For more, see ISPs to rural America: Live with dial-up).

Hong Kong's Broadband Is How Fast?

From WebProNews


In case you're still convinced there's a true open market in broadband space and the handful of companies running it are sufficient competition for each other, consider this: in Hong Kong, you can get a fiber-to-the-home connection 20 times faster than Verizon's FiOS connection for about the same price.


Gizmodo was quick to point out that Verizon will deliver 5 Mbps to customers for $40 per month, and up to 30 Mbps for $180 per month.

But in Hong Kong, according to a City Telecom press release, 5 Mbps isn't even an option. Or even 10, because they've just discontinued their 10 Mbps offering, making the 25 Mbps the entry (basic) package.

How much is that? The release doesn't say, but if you'd like to try the 100 Mbps service (boy would we!), it'll about $48.50. Not fast enough? (Huh? Couldn't fathom that kind of speed.) CTEL can upgrade you to 200 Mbps for $88.

Still too slow?

I know, your mind's melting, right?

How about 1 Gbps for $215?

So, how do you feel about paying $180 per month for that blistering 30 Mbps now? Yeah, kinda figured. Maybe we should ask for our $200 billion back, eh?

A Tale of Two Cities

From Save The Internet

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

And when it comes to broadband, Tokyo is a long way from Little Rock.

The Japanese enjoy broadband speeds that are up to 30 times faster than what’s available here at a far lower cost. This faster, cheaper, universal broadband access – according to an excellent article in today’s Washington Post – “is pushing open doors to Internet innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States.”

To the Japanese, our “high-speed” Internet service doesn’t look much different from dial-up:

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.

Ultra-high-speed applications are being rolled out for low-cost, high-definition teleconferencing, for telemedicine — which allows urban doctors to diagnose diseases from a distance — and for advanced telecommuting to help Japan meet its goal of doubling the number of people who work from home by 2010.

Open Secrets

What’s the secret of Japan’s success? Open access.

Less than a decade ago, DSL service in Japan was slower and pricier than in the United States. So the Japanese government mandated open access policies that forced the telephone monopoly to share its wires at wholesale rates with new competitors. The result: a broadband explosion.

Not only did DSL get faster and cheaper in Japan, but the new competition actually forced the creaky old phone monopoly to innovate. As the Post explains:

Competition in Japan gave a kick in the pants to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), once a government-controlled enterprise and still Japan’s largest phone company. With the help of government subsidies and tax breaks, NTT launched a nationwide build-out of fiber-optic lines to homes, making the lower-capacity copper wires obsolete.

“Obviously, without the competition, we would not have done all this at this pace,” said Hideki Ohmichi, NTT’s senior manager for public relations.

Made in America

If this quaint idea of “competition” seems familiar, that’s because America invented “open access” policies in the first place. And open access worked for decades to bring lower prices and more choices in long-distance phone service and dial-up Internet access.

The Japanese first adopted open access because they were worried about falling behind us. But under pressure from our own phone and cable monopolists, the Bush administration abandoned open access – and the fundamental protections for Net Neutrality along with it.

Now they’re standing idly by as America drops further and further behind the rest of the world in every measure of broadband progress.

But instead of recognizing their mounting failures and charting a new course (or really, just getting back on the old one), our policymakers prefer to shoot the messenger.

Left Behind

Which bring us to Little Rock.

On Tuesday, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor hosted a public hearing on high-speed Internet access. Rural groups, educators and librarians turned out to decry the lack of broadband service and high-tech opportunities in their communities.

“We have not successfully transitioned into the information age, and I would contend a lot of that is because we’re not delivering broadband to our people,” testified Rex Nelson of the Delta Regional Authority, according to a story in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “Having access to broadband in even the most rural areas of our country is as important as getting that electricity to them and air conditioning to them back in the 1940s and the 1950s.”

Also on hand were FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein — two notable exceptions to the usual inside-the-Beltway blindness on broadband issues. They bemoaned America’s digital decline.

“While some have protested the international broadband penetration rankings,” Adelstein said, alluding to some of his colleagues at the Commission, “the fact is the U.S. has dropped year-after-year. This downward trend and the lack of broadband value illustrate the sobering point that when it comes to giving our citizens affordable access to state-of the-art communications, the U.S. has fallen behind its global competitors.”

Copps called the lack of a national broadband policy “tantamount to playing Russian roulette with our future.”

“Each and every citizen of this great country should have access to the wonders of communications,” Copps said. “I’m not talking about doing all these people some kind of feel-good, do-gooder favor by including them. I’m talking about doing America a favor. I’m talking about making certain our citizens can compete here at home and around the world with those who are already using broadband in all aspects of their lives.”

Bringing the benefits of broadband to all Americans would seem like a no-brainer for any politician. But if the reaction thus far from the White House and the majority at the FCC is any indication, you’d think Copps and Adelstein were speaking in Japanese.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Does CEO mean "Cheating & Extortion Organization"?

Techdirt again . . . .


Why Metered Broadband Slows Internet Innovation
from the how-to-slow-internet-innovation dept

It's been a while since there's been much debate over the issue of metered vs. flat-rate internet access plans, but it's flaring up for a variety of reasons these days. First, Adam Thierer posted a long essay over at the Technology Liberation Front arguing that piggybacking on WiFi has real costs and that metered broadband would solve many of the problems by convincing access point owners to secure their broadband. This seemed like an odd argument -- adding a significant cost as a method of signaling that there was, in a few very specific circumstances, a tiny little marginal cost associated with some WiFi piggybacking. The second thing thing that's given new life to the metered broadband argument is the sudden reappearance of stories about Comcast's unpublished usage caps. This is an old, old story that's been talked about for many years, but pops up every now and again. Basically, Comcast (and some other ISPs) will cut off certain customers who are using too much bandwidth. The real problem, honestly, isn't that Comcast is cutting off these users, but that they're not at all transparent about it. The services are promoted as "unlimited" and then the usage caps are kept a secret... until you've been kicked off.

Anyway, with the latest barrage of stories about these usage caps, it's common for those supporting ISPs to blame the concept of flat-rate pricing, because it only opens up an opportunity for people to abuse the system. That, inevitably, leads to a discussion about bringing back metered broadband offerings (which are found around the world, but rarely in the US). This is a bad idea for a variety of reasons. First of all, most of these problems would go away if the ISPs in question were more open about their caps. However, much more importantly, if you want to encourage innovation online, it's important to leave flat-rate pricing in place. The second you set up metered broadband, it adds significant transaction costs for both the ISPs and anyone trying to do anything or try anything online. For ISPs, they now have to put in place significantly more tracking equipment and then need to manage the various different levels of service, differential billing and more customer service costs in dealing with customer confusion (or anger if a bill seems too high).

However, the bigger problem is the transaction costs it introduces for users. Suddenly, internet surfers really need to see any particular website or service as being worthwhile. Just the act of making them debate whether or not it's worthwhile to pay up to do something represents a mental transaction cost that will slow down adoption of new services. Furthermore, as bandwidth has increased, many of the newer innovative services have come about to make use of that bandwidth -- which only drives further investment in more bandwidth, driving more innovative uses. It's a virtuous circle. Yet, by metering broadband connections, slowing down adoption of these new services, you slow down the innovation and hold people back from trying out or even creating new, innovative and useful services that would require more bandwidth. It's a recipe for slowing innovation online.

While an executive for the CTIA says that flat-rate pricing only made sense when the internet was first getting off the ground, that represents a false belief that innovation on the internet has slowed down and the internet is now somehow "mature." Instead, internet innovation has been increasing as new apps and services are built on top of older apps and services, leading to greater and greater innovation. If the CTIA exec gets his way and convinces providers to move more to metered bandwidth, then his belief that the internet has plateaued may become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it'll undoubtedly slow the pace of innovation online. Imagine, for example, that metered bandwidth was common when YouTube first hit the scene? It would absolutely have slowed adoption, because video uses quite a bit of bandwidth and people would have been a lot less likely to test it out. In fact, the same could be said for any kind of non-text multimedia. Podcasts? Why waste that bandwidth? Streaming radio? iTunes would also be more expensive, as every download doesn't just cost $0.99, but your metered bandwidth charge. If you look at history of innovative services, you'll see they tend to move more and more towards flat rate offerings, as it encourages usage and encourages innovation. Phone service and mobile phone service have both trended in exactly this direction -- and in both cases it's because it's opened up a much larger overall market, even if it means less per customer. So, why are we suddenly trying to go the other way with broadband?

Someone's Been Lying . . . . isn't that right HughesNet?

From Techdirt (which is so much better than the overrated & overhyped TechCrunch) . . . .


What Bandwidth Crunch?
from the doesn't-look-so-bad-this-way dept

While you have lobbyists, consultants and politicians claiming that the internet is on the verge of collapsing due to running out of bandwidth, it seems that the techies would beg to differ. We already pointed out that the report put out by D&T consultants was later refuted by the folks who run the nodes that D&T insisted were at risk of being overwhelmed. Now we have Andrew Odlyzko adding more weight to the idea that the bandwidth crunch that so many lobbyists and telco execs seem to be screaming about is something of a myth. Odlyzko, of course, is also the guy who pointed out that Worldcom was lying back during the dot com boom when it insisted that internet traffic was doubling every 100 days. Now he's noting that internet traffic growth is slowing -- which very few of the doomsday estimates take into account. Internet traffic is still growing, of course, but not at nearly as rapid a pace. That isn't surprising, after all. The internet is starting to reach maturity in terms of the number of folks who are joining in the developed world. Certainly, those people are using more and more bandwidth, but not at an overwhelming pace, and there appears to be plenty of capacity to keep up with the pace of growth. Once again, it looks like those warning of the imminent death of the internet are basing it either on faulty data or are extrapolating based on data that doesn't take into account slowing growth. Either way, it is interesting that the actual technologists never seem all that worried about running out of capacity. Hell, even when any telco exec breaks the party line and admits that the threat of a bandwidth crunch is completely overstated, it's always been the CTO who says so. Somehow, I get the feeling that the technology guys have a lot better handle on this than the lobbyists and the politicians...


The article has links included at Techdirt.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

From the "I can't plan worth a damn" dept...

or maybe it's the "if their lips are moving, we know they're lying" dept.

Heavy Internet users unplugged by US cable company

Several Internet users in the United States have been unplugged by their service provider because they download too much, a press report said here Friday.

Cable Internet and entertainment provider Comcast "has punished some transgressors by cutting off their Internet service, arguing that excessive downloaders hog Internet capacity and slow down the network for other customers," the Washington Post reported.

Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas told AFP the company was addressing "the problem of abusive activity that adversely impacts on everybody else's experience."

"I can't give you a number" for clients who have been disconnected, said Douglas, while assuring that customers whose plugs were pulled are "very rare."

According to the Washington Post, a customer would have to download the equivalent of 1,000 songs or four feature films a day to trigger a disconnection warning.

Comcast gives customers a month to fix problems or upgrade their service before they are disconnected, the Washington Post said.

An unplugged client in Rockville, a suburb of Washington, has filed a complaint with the county he lives in, saying his contract with his service provider states that he is entitled to unlimited Internet access, officials in Montgomery County said.

A recent report by the ABI market research company warned that the growth in demand for "bandwidth-hungry services such as HDTV and online gaming is leading to a critical lack of capacity" in US cable operators' networks.

"Cable TV operators trying to satisfy the increasing bandwidth demands of HDTV customers feel very much like the thrifty grocer who tried to cram ten pounds of potatoes into a five-pound bag," ABI research director Stan Schatt said last month.

"The increasing bandwidth demands on cable operators will soon reach crisis stage, yet this is a ‘dirty little industry secret’ that no one talks about."

Sunday, September 2, 2007

The State of Satellite Internet Today

So what to do?

At this point, the only justification for satellite internet is if you're a Bedouin in the middle of the desert and you live with camels, or if you live in the middle of nowhere without any phone lines. It's a third-rate option at best.


HughesNet sucks. It was an average-performer and over-priced before they implemented the FAP / traffic limits this past Spring. After that, they're worthless. Exceed their limits, you're without internet for a full day. Seriously, can you live with that?


Is WildBlue any better? I don't know. If these opinions are to be believed, then it's not; only a different FAP / traffic-limit scheme. To me, it's not worth a few Franklins to find out either, especially when it comes with a 12-month contract. If they, like HughesNet, can change the contract terms afterwards without consulting you, then it's a consumer trap.


THE PROBLEM:
I've added some other articles to show the whole problem is infrastructure-related AND regulatory-related because there is NO COMPETITION. The US has allowed monopolistic telco companies to dictate the terms, and they've effectively locked it down and made the US uncompetitive against the rest of the world in places like Japan; Japan is now the model to aspire to today.

THE US IS NOW OFFICIALLY TECHNO-CONSERVATIVE.
While the rest of the world is progressively moving forward, the US has done a u-turn and has been going backwards for awhile now. As with all things, ideology has ruined reality, which is why the US public now has some of the worst internet options at the highest prices, in comparison with the rest of the industrialized world.

It's a shitty way to do business, even if you think you have a captive audience.


As Mark Cuban said here . . . .
". . . . The internet is "dead and boring," . . . . "We have reached the point of diminishing returns with today's internet. The speed of broadband to your home won't increase much more in the next five years than it has in the last five years. That is not enough to work as a platform for new levels of applications that will require much, much higher levels of bandwidth."

Broadband to the home isn’t fast enough for downloads of movies at DVD quality to be ubiquitous. That means it’s no longer a platform for technological innovation.

Think of it this way. Way back when, electricity changed the world. It was the platform for everything electronic that we do today. Do you get excited about electricity or is it just a utility? Maybe old people who remember the advent of electricity still get excited about it. No one else does.

The internet is in the same position today. It’s no longer an exciting platform for societal and business change. It’s a utility. . . . "


The US invented the internet, and this is what they've done with it. People won't buy yesterday's news. And that's the US today. The last great myth that communications companies don't seem to realize is that people will opt for real life over virtual life. Of course, if you're livelihood depends on a myth, then you want to perpetuate it as long as possible.



RECOMMENDATION:
If broadband is not available in your area and dialup is available, go with dialup, avoid satellite, and save yourself some money and some headaches.

In my opinion, the recently imposed FAP / traffic limits make satellite internet relatively worthless. As I said before, it's overpriced and doesn't perform, no matter what the sales pitch is. Period! It's dialup-over-the-satellite. At 3x to 4x the price of dialup, and and it won't get better in yours or my lifetime.


As I've said, my goal is to be off HughesNet by the year-end. I will continue to look for alternatives to HughesNet, WildBlue, and satellite internet, but I'm not expecting to find them. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.


More to come later!

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Hey HughesNet and telcos! Wake up! It's the 21st century!

Why Japan Is Eating America's Lunch On Broadband by Ian Welsh

"I often say, to the point where regular readers of my home blog are probably banging their heads against the keyboard -- right now -- that the U.S. doesn't have a lot of complicated problems. We know how to fix most of them and people who keep saying, "well, that's complicated" are either stupid (unlikely), are benefiting from the status quo or are imagining the migraine of trying to fight entrenched interests.

Broadband access is exactly the same. The U.S. is getting its lunch eaten. As SaveTheInternet points out, they get access that is often 30x faster than the U.S. As a result they are experiencing innovation -- and enjoying applications that Americans simply don't have access to. As this Washington Post story points out:

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.

Ultra-high-speed applications are being rolled out for low-cost, high-definition teleconferencing, for telemedicine -- which allows urban doctors to diagnose diseases from a distance -- and for advanced telecommuting to help Japan meet its goal of doubling the number of people who work from home by 2010.

Oh, and all that speed -- costs less too.

Now, 10 years ago Japan had slower internet than the U.S. So they looked to the U.S. to see how to do it -- and they saw that the U.S. had open access laws (where in the old days, companies could buy access to the lines at wholesale rates -- which is why there was an ISP on every corner in the 90s) and decided they were key.

So they opened up broadband access -- mandated that phone and cable lines had to be available to whoever wanted access. As SaveTheInternet points out:

If this quaint idea of "competition" seems familiar, that's because America invented "open access" policies in the first place. And open access worked for decades to bring lower prices and more choices in long-distance phone service and dial-up Internet access.

The Japanese first adopted open access because they were worried about falling behind us. But under pressure from our own phone and cable monopolists, the Bush administration abandoned open access -- and the fundamental protections for Net Neutrality along with it.

Now they're standing idly by as America drops further and further behind the rest of the world in every measure of broadband progress.

Now here's the thing. What we're talking about is the Republican administration reducing competition. In a competitive market this wouldn't have happened. When you're dealing with a natural monopoly (and phone and cable lines are natural monopolies because driving more than one each to each home doesn't make sense) you have to legislate the market in such a way as to make sure competition exists. The free market can't do its thing if there isn't a market -- and in most of the U.S. there isn't a market. You have at best two possible suppliers. Often one. And in many areas -- if you want "high" speed -- none.

The modern "conservative" fallacy is that free markets means lack of government regulation. That isn't even close to what it means -- what it means is a market with many actors, relatively transparent information, and no one actor or group with pricing power, whether through collusion or monopoly.

The laws that made the U.S. resistant to this sort of bullshit have either been taken away (open access) or have been weakened by the courts (for example the recent ruling that prices all being the same wasn't prima facie evidence of price fixing, which it has been for the last, oh, over 100 years.)

When you don't have competition, with few exceptions, you don't get nearly as much progress or better products. And so the U.S. has worse broadband. It has worse wireless. It has worse (and deliberately crippled) phones. It's falling behind in the very industries it invented. All because a few gatekeeper corporations don't want to have to compete and because the Bush administration and conservative justices believe in concentration of wealth rather than progress and competition.

The U.S. will keep falling behind as long as this remains the case. Americans like to think that they are the most technically advanced nation in the world, but except in military affairs, and perhaps biotech, that's generally not the case. The best and most advanced cars aren't made in the U.S. The U.S.'s trains are a joke compared to ultra-fast trains in Japan, China and Europe. The U.S.'s consumer electronics are not as good with very few exceptions. And the U.S. is falling behind on all types of telecommunications that don't involve spying on someone.

If the U.S. doesn't make the next technological revolution, foreigners don't need to hang onto U.S. dollars to be ready to buy up the future. And since the U.S. needs foreigners to subsidize American overconsumption and the overvalued dollar, that's a bad place to be. If the future isn't in America, then buying America suddenly doesn't seem like such a good deal..."