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[martinuzz]

Worth a read: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/opinion/g7-trump-quebec-trudeau.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

[Kagus]

-snip-

Less lethal weapons have similar problems as firearms is the thing.  A taser is as effective as a gun for a murder weapon (since you can just kill the person after stunning them).  Additionally the expectation of lesser damage to the target/less legal consequences might lead an untrained user to attack someone where they might not with a gun.  So you still need background checks and lessons.  Of course people being armed with less lethal weapons is far better than guns; if nothing else, you can't go on a murder spree with a taser.

The truth of the matter is violence is violence and you shouldn't use less lethal weapons unless you'd be willing to beat someone up with your fists, cause its about as rude.  Most of the weapons we're talking about are far worse than they sound.  For example the ADS basically makes people feel like their skin is on fire; AFAIK its never been used in the field because the only version they have is crowd sized and someone might get knocked down in the target area.  Likewise rubber bullets against an unarmored target can break bones if aimed anywhere other than the torso.  Pepper spray was marketed in the US as something for women to defend themselves from predators so AFAIK most criminals/idiots are too macho to use it, but its a pretty nasty substance.  From what I've heard its like poison ivy x10.  All less lethal weapons, even when used properly, can kill or cause permanent damage if someone has existing health conditions or is too young/old.

Its off topic but a while back Russia tried to invent video game sleep gas.  They used it on a building full of hostages and a bunch of them fell unconscious, then choked on their vomit and died.  In real life knocking people unconscious is a very bad idea if their health is a priority.

I was thinking more specifically about what to equip trained police officers with, not an "arming the public" deal. I absolutely wouldn't trust John Q. with a taser pistol or beanbag slug shotty. I'd just like a more reliable, less fatal alternative for law enforcement so they can do their jobs safely without accidentally (or "accidentally") killing loads of people, which I feel hasn't really been offered yet by current technology and production.

As an aside, while it's not pepperspray, I have actually inhaled teargas before! Fun times. Can't compare to poison ivy, because I've somehow managed to avoid that while growing up.

Teargas was certainly what I'd refer to as "a disincentive", but drugged-up life-or-death I'm not sure it'd really put someone down... Mind, I also happened to be in the middle of my first encounter with atypical pneumonia when I went through the gas trial, so I might have had a different experience than most of the other people there. If you can just get beyond the feeling of choking to death and your head exploding, you could probably still rough someone up.

Note about the nonlethal firearm rounds:

They won't stop someone who doesn't feel the pain. The receiving end of a bullet hit receives somewhat less force than the recoil of the gun that the projectile was fired from, which means that at best you could rock a shoulder back a bit with a shotgun beanbag round or whatever. It's not likely to knock anyone down unless you're a master of gun-fu capable of shooting somebody's leg at the precise right moment to throw it out of place, causing them to miss a step and fall over or something equally insane.

More non-lethal options would be good, but humans are silly, squishy critters with a tendency to complain loudly when you break bones or use other always-effective ways of stopping someone from doing [name of action here]. Ultimately, the only nonlethal option as effective as lethal force is removing the situations that start the fights, entirely. Which is not really feasible for many reasons, I'd expect.

Y'know, I'd honestly not thought about it vis-a-vis recoil. Although technically, there are frequently recoil compensators of some kind and also the distribution of the force over a larger area, there's also plenty of resistance fucking with the projectile, and it's mostly about focusing the force rather than amplifying it via space magic... So, yeah, pain. Potentially throwing someone off-balance by hitting them far enough away from the center of gravity, but gun-fu. I just derped.

The unfortunate thing about loudmouth complainers is that you get the worst end of them when they're still alive enough to keep complaining. Which isn't a very pleasant path to trod when thinking of compliance-inspiration devices.


I'm just convinced that there's got to be a better less-lethal option out there that we haven't invented yet, because we're too busy developing more-lethals and the current generation of less-lethal is either unused or "good enough".

[martinuzz]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

'the trans-atlantic relation'

[Starver]

(On less-than-lethal weaponry...)

I wanted to post a link/pic regarding the Boxing Glove Arrow, but I found myself spoilt for choice, half way through a dozen tvtropes pages,  comparing all the "but would it really work?" essays and articles.

Suffice to say, I shall just mention this as a thing, and let you ruin your lives looking it up. If you need and/or want to.

[McTraveller]

One trouble with international trade is that it's really difficult to determine to what extent lower prices from one country compared to another are due to actual benefits of specialization versus less savory causes.

Another trouble is when you have national leaders who start just assuming that all lower prices are due to "less savory" reasons.

I wish we would sick our AI overlords on solving that kind of problem instead of trying to maximize ad revenue or play Go or do high-frequency-trading or whatever.

[Sheb]

Why? It's fairly easy to see if a state subsidie its companies for exemple.

[McTraveller]

Subsidies can be beneficial or detrimental though - just saying "subsidies are bad" is not a robust evaluation metric.  For instance, if public funds are used to subsidize improvements in automation, that could be a "beneficial" subsidy.  But if you take public funds to simply say "we will pay 10% of the price you want to get so you can put it on the international market for 10% less" then that is a detrimental subsidy.

Note that I do agree that, as is common in the US, instead of saying "we'll pay you X% of the price you want" that "we'll reduce your tax burden by Y%" is the same kind of subsidy - it's a little bit goofy in the accounting though because it's a "not sending a bill" instead of "sending a check", but it still has the effect of artificially lowering a price without having a corresponding productivity improvement.

Basically my personal stance is that any price advantage due to something other than a productivity advantage is detrimental - be it a subsidy or any other type of policy.

[MorleyDev]

Subsidies are essential for certain types of industry to function in certain types of economies.

A tertiary economy, aka. the economy of a 'developed nation', is not going to be able to maintain farms and farmers without government subsidies of some kind and hasn't been able to since the 19th century.

The order of progression is almost always primary (raw materials) -> secondary (manufacturing) -> tertiary (services), so to keep some local industrial and agrarian style business you need that government support.

[McTraveller]

Subsidies are also essential for certain types of industry to function in certain types of economies.

A tertiary economy, aka. the economy of a 'developed nation', is not going to be able to run profitable farms without government subsidies of some kind and hasn't been able to since the 19th century.

The order of progression is almost always primary (raw materials) -> secondary (manufacturing) -> tertiary (services), so to keep some local industrial and agrarian style business you need that government support.

Can you clarify this?  I feel like there are some conditions or qualifiers that are missing for an absolute claim like "you need the government support to keep ... in business."

Why would a subsidy be required to have profitable farms?  The participants in the tertiary economy need to eat, so they will either pay for the food directly (without subsidy) or they pay for it partially directly plus partially with a fraction of their taxes (with subsidy).  I'm not sure why that would make a difference, all-else-equal.  Is the caveat the use of the word 'local' in your statement, where a local producer wouldn't be able to compete with a foreign one?   If so, that goes back to the original statement - in that case, the reason why the foreign producer has lower prices matters - is it because it's more efficient, or because it's shifting cost elsewhere?

If the foreign producer really is more efficient, then the local subsidies are actually a global inefficiency.  It does get tricky when you start trying to include costs like the dangers of having all production of something in a single small geographic area though - so maybe it's not really that "inefficient" after all.  That is, the "inefficiency" is the price you pay for distributed production.

[MorleyDev]

Well the simplest point is that you can't have the minimum wage and higher living standards of a developed nation, and pay employees enough to make your produce competitive with nations with lower living standards and lower price-per-hour of people. So if you want businesses in your country that can compete and operate at scale and keep the higher living standards, it needs subsidies.

When I say local, I literally just mean "within the same country as the government offering the subsides".

To stick with farming as an example, there are regional and seasonal differences that could make farming more or less successful from region to region and vary from time, so subsidies are used to stabilise that so that farmers aren't crippled by that variance (part of Americas subsidies for farmers goes towards their insurance for crop failures, for example).

[PTTG??]

If anyone else had insulted Canada the way Trump has, the US would make him a pariah.

[Sheb]

Well the simplest point is that you can't have the minimum wage and higher living standards of a developed nation, and pay employees enough to make your produce competitive with nations with lower living standards and lower price-per-hour of people. So if you want businesses in your country that can compete and operate at scale and keep the higher living standards, it needs subsidies.

Or you need to be more productive, which is basically how rich country are rich.

[MorleyDev]

But when you have a more educated workforce, a requirement for keeping that 70% of the population who work in the tertiary at a stable amount and keeping the innovation and developments and new technologies and general growth (that let a country be more immediately and directly relevant to other countries on the global stage) from that economy going, attracting workers for rest to be productive is just plain harder when there are more lucrative, less physically demanding jobs.

Subsidies can allow for them to pay employees more than they could otherwise to help correct for that, without the tertiary then needing to pay more from their paycheck for basic needs, with the costs then rebalanced out via the taxes (That of course means you tax higher earners more, since taxing lower earners the same percentage as higher earners actually disproportionately disenfranchises them by taking a disproportionately higher amount of their disposable income).

Subsidies are also used to encourage development of new businesses. If a government wants to encourage more tech companies to appear, for example, they can offer subsidies as cash investments or tax benefits. Some businesses are longer-term investments or harder to get off the ground without some government support for them, and have difficulty attracting investors and financial backing by themselves.

[McTraveller]

Well the simplest point is that you can't have the minimum wage and higher living standards of a developed nation, and pay employees enough to make your produce competitive with nations with lower living standards and lower price-per-hour of people. So if you want businesses in your country that can compete and operate at scale and keep the higher living standards, it needs subsidies.

Or you need to be more productive, which is basically how rich country are rich.

Yes this - the original quote really should read "If your businesses can't complete and operate at scale because they aren't efficient enough, you can prop them up with subsidies."  This is an ill-advised use of resources except in the situation where you want to prop them up for insurance.  But you still want those business to be as efficient as possible; unchecked subsidies are the worst of both worlds.

@MorleyDev - the rest of your examples, using public funds to invest in new productive endeavors - that isn't really "subsidy" so much as it is "real investment".  I stand wholly behind the concept of public funds for short-term-unprofitable research.  Heck, I think that we should have publicly funded pharma research to get around the stupidity associated with for-profit pharma.  Society as a whole should be behind funding "unprofitable" cures, because the cure itself is the profit!

Anyway, I think this little side conversation has illustrated my point - subsidies alone aren't an evil thing - the devil is in the details of what they are subsidizing and how.
 

[MorleyDev]

Far as I can tell, to stick with farming, there aren't really any big obvious optimisations in farming that are readily available that would reduce the need for the subsidies.

Modern agriculture is pretty efficient, we've been doing it as a species for quite a long time after all, and the futures optimisations I can think of involving automated farming drones and bulk artificially-grown meat are still quite a ways away and still definitively in the "research" phase.

What we do with the goods after it's farmed could be improved for sure though, lots of food waste going on at the moment.

But countries don't want to lose their farms to other countries, for a huge variety of reasons (not wanting to be so dependent on foreign powers, wanting it as a card in trade, wanting to keep people in employment to stop economic turmoil), so some propping up is going to be a required thing in those situations.

As you say, you do need long-term planning alongside them. Governments are supposed to have those longer time-horizons than businesses that let them accommodate for that and make those kinds of investments.