The market doesn't shrink. The market is the number of exchanged goods. The market doesn't care if there are 200 merchants or 250 merchants. What changes is the distribution of goods and merchants, and when the number of merchants is very low and their concentration of market power high, we get into situations (oligopoly, monopoly) that we do not want because we know they are bad.

For the past 20 years, when I go to a bookstore and I want a book they don't have, they could almost always order it and have it for me the next day.

I'm not talking about a perfect equilibrium. I'm talking about the simple fact that if your country has one region with 50% unemployment rates and one region where employers can't find workers, your whole country will destabilze.

Of course there will always be differences. But if they get too extreme, the consequences are much higher and much more expensive then the costs of some small interventions.

I never said anything like that and my arguments are completely unrelated to technical or other progress. So please burn the strawman somewhere else.

It's increasingly the job of professors at research universities in the sciences to be more of a "research manager" than a "researcher". They're expected to have a big lab of 5-15 students and postdocs, and to bring in enough grant funding to pay for this lab. The ones who are successful at this lab-head game bring in a bunch of money, have a large lab, and as a result oversee a lot of work that comes out of that lab, most of which has them as a co-author. Individual researchers without a team can't really compete against that.

This is going to be useful for the insides of optical systems, lens hoods, and such. Other than that, probably not that significant.

free trade theory is correct

There is no such thing as "free trade" and there's no proof that the "theory" is correct.

"The Free Market" is a fairy tale that the elite tell us to keep us from leaving the veal pen.

Considering that the Supreme Court just got done slapping down the EPA, for exactly the reason I was discussing here, I don't think either "random" or "FUD" are accurate descriptions of my comment. In your dreams, maybe. It's sad that they're turning into nightmares for you. But be reassured that the reasons for that are good.

And yet, in Thomas Jefferson's view, would be well worth the cost, and is far more than an order of magnitude (in years) overdue.

Except that these aren't "market inefficiencies".

Tariffs exist for real reasons. For example: the solar industry in China is heavily government-subsidized. So by removing any tariffs, the government would allow them to compete on the "free" market (which really isn't) against other companies in the U.S. and Europe that aren't so heavily subsidized.

When government is subsidizing your industry, it's isn't a real "market". And therefore this does not represent "market inefficiencies".

Make no mistake: there is no "free trade" in this "free trade" agreement. It amounts to pouring buckets of money into China that could go to otherwise profitable companies elsewhere.

What I think is funny is that this is a classic example of a good patent: a "Why didn't I think of that?" kind of thing. Because despite the implications in the article, this ain't "rocket science" all all. They just took the well-known concepts behind any decent heatsink and reversed them.

Yes, but you can't buy World of Warcraft experience points with a kidney.

I tried.

He made them an offer they couldn't refuse.

You have enumerated the reasons I will never, ever play a "Free 2 Play" game.

Ain't nothing free.

It's almost certainly BS, and you are spot on regarding those movies.

I assume you're referring to the 1931 Lewis Milestone version and not the (also pretty good) Billy Wilder version from the '70s.