The way the previous secretary of defense general Mattis commented the actions of Trump shows the seriousness of the situation:

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society.

An immature leader which tries to divide the American people.

Mattis has refrained from telling the truth about Trump for a long time, perhaps out of the courtesy the the Presidency itself, but now he came out.

And then he says the obvious:

Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part.

The present secretary of Defence, that succeeded Mattis (if we skip the brief acting secretary Shanahan) is unfortunately backtracked after the White House hinted at his removal. Trump just yearns to get those paratroopers to patrol the Capital.

Yet I think that now really the back is broken of the Trump presidency. I think that simply there are too many Republicans who have before never voted for Democrats and they'll do that now in the next elections. The handling of the pandemic was bad, but this thing is not working also.There of course his base and this has a big enough echo chamber to live in La-la-land. Trump's performance is so absurd and he's showing his inability so clearly that it's hard not noticing it. But of course, things can also just get worse.

Thank you for sharing that, really. It's great to hear from someone working in a police department. You make very good points in your comment.

I also don’t like any idea or symbol that serves to separate police officers from the people they serve. I wouldn’t allow officers to wear those thin blue line patches as an accessory on their uniforms. I understand it is meant to support officers, but it isn’t necessary and many times serves to reinforce an imaginary bifurcation of citizens and officers -- the latter of which belongs to the former anyway. — Wolfman

Just like with the military, when those who serve start to feel there "outside" from the society, that the civilian society is something different that doesn't care about them, then you start getting problems. If the criticism turns into hatred and abhorrence of the police, things just turn worse and the "police community" that feels separated just hunkers down. Luckily that can be avoided, but it takes an effort.

I don’t like how some police officers are so prideful, and even arrogant. I think law enforcement agencies need to do better in encouraging an ethic of humility throughout their departments. My lieutenant always told me, “Just because you wear the uniform, doesn’t mean you are above the people you serve. You serve them.” — Wolfman

That humility should be part of professionalism. There's a way to get people who serve in uniform to do better when you get them to understand that the best police force is the "smart" and professional one which can tackle underlying problems by good policing cooperation with other authorities and the community and doesn't use the brute force in every issue. Unfortunately Hollywood promotes the idea that the best cop is the door crashing, hard hitting F-the-regulations renegade, as if that's the guy who will save the day. It has a really bad effect, actually. Because that is what many assume police to be as, let's face it, typically we aren't customers of the police daily.

But in any case this isn't just the police. It's the society itself and the people and there you go to far larger problems in the American system. But just like the Armed Forces did a lot by integrating blacks and not keeping them in separate black units. Wasn't easy, but did succeed. That police work improves could be part of the bigger solution.

The US could do lot to improve it's police and it has the possibility to do it.

How bad things just could be, just look south of your border. Mexicans truly don't respect the police. When there is deep distrust and disrespect for the police, the force basically stops functioning. As in many Third World countries, the usual way people think of the police is that they are thieves in uniform. You get this total collapse of the legal system. And that disrespect and distrust from the community is just overwhelming. It is shared by everybody: the rich and the poor.

You can literally see it from the way the Mexican police officer slouches in his car, how many of them are overweight and basically the appearance is of someone who doesn't take pride in himself. Or then there are the few in full tactical gear, heavily armed with automatic weapons wearing balaclavas and speeding in their trucks with their tactical team to the next location to fight the war. My wife is Mexican and we have nearly every year stayed there. Just to give an anecdote, my mother-in-law was driving me and my wife and kids in an upscale part of downtown Mexico City. A policeman approached that car to stop because I think we had passed a red light. My feisty mother-in-law just yelled at him: "I have two small children in this car, I don't have any time for you now!" and just continued away. And the police, who were actually many present there just where left standing there. I told my mother-in-law never to do that in Finland. She just laughed, but agreed to behave differently here.

But back to the US, I fear that the most immediate obstacle is now Trump as he genuinely wants to pour gasoline to the fire now and show his credentials in being the "Law and Order" President. Perhaps his recklessness will get other leaders to behave better.

Secretary of Defence Esper is against deploying the military (except the National Guard, which is already deployed).

A common sense reply, that also tells Trump is going to have a new secretary of defence again, if he has the time to fire this one...

Not sure about logic, but the secret to getting us to do what you want is just to complain about us publically. We hate that and will probably give in to make you stop. — Baden

The logic is that there are the site guidelines and people have to follow them. And I do presume when the admin bans someone he or she will look if these guidelines have been breached or not.

The simple fact is that a site left without moderation will sink very quickly to a very low level. Sounds bad, but that's the truth.

Without addressing the issues that allow police officers to get away with this, and make them really lethal, I doubt that would do much. Cops don't get fired and blacklisted if they've got previous instances of brutality and murder, cops write statements to cover up their crimes, prosecutors go very light on them, police unions resist changes to protect suspects, the new cops would have military grade arms... — fdrake

When one says that the culture has to change, it actually is about an immense field of work, multitude of things that would have to change. Not only the police, the whole US legal system is basically now there to jail people. This gives credence to the Bayley's view that StreetlightX mentioned.

The question of the police and the security system is just like the question of the armed forces. Is it there to defend from an exterior threat or is it there basically to keep the present leaders in power? Or is the armed forces itself in power? This isn't just a question of "training" and "culture", although those are absolutely essential on how armed forces perform. The changes have to happen in how the whole society itself works. It is same for the police in any country. The Norwegian police and the Nigerian police are totally different as are the Norwegian Army and the Nigerian Army, but so are the societies themselves. Problems in Nigeria wouldn't go away with replacing Nigerian police with Norwegian police. Or one cannot think that one can transform one without there happening changes in the society itself.

There have been good remarks just why is this so difficult, starting for example with the police unions. I think that also electing key figures in the legal system, which sounds great, is also a part of this "systematic racism" problem in the US. Unlike in my country, in the US the sheriffs and prosecutors are elected, which makes the an issue far beyond just the realm of the police force. Americans love retribution and punishment, something in the culture of the frontier or so (likely people know this better than I). "Tough on crime" is something that sells and will get you elected.

What is actually quite normal is that the people who basically live normal lives and have no touch to the justice system at all usually demand harsher sentencing than those who actually know the reality. Vast majority of Finns want harsher sentences and think that the whole system is too lax, but the whole legal system is quite separate from any populist politician to change it.

Trump desperately wants to inflame the situation and make it worse. Among his supporters, he would look good. Better yet, that Democrats and never-Trumpers would be outraged would be even great for him.

From the conference call with the governors (and from tweets, naturally) one can notice just how much he wants to send the military in.



Dominator in Chief.

You know the answer, everybody packs a video camera in his or her pocket and a truly easy way to get it published now days exists.

And just like with the Pandemic, I think we truly should set higher standards for this millennium as earlier times. The fatalities caused by the police ought to go down. The US society could still be less violent, you know.

Like the country YOU live in, NOS4A2.

Yep. If Americans think now it's bad, they just can look to Latin America for a glimpse how much worse it can be.

(Of course, the statistic of Syria is a bit absurd when it's estimated that about half a million have died in the civil war.)

And those police fatalities have gone down:





Hence it's far more safer to be a policeman now than earlier. Also, killings by police have gone down. And of course, it's not only African Americans that are shot or killed. But that really doesn't matter.

The comparison between the US and other countries still tells a lot:

StreetlightX, I think I found the reason, because I didn't notice your reply here:

Sorry for that, but this thread goes too fast for me. I was referring to your later answer, but now it makes more sense. I'll try to answer, even if you might not have the patience anymore.

I think this isn't because neoliberalism, because the reasons are engrained far earlier than contemporary neoliberalism. Basically the welfare state in the US has had large gaps all the time, there has always been a huge wealth gap and this has created povetry unlike seen in other OECD countries. Absolute povetry hasn't been eradicated as in other OECD countries. And the wealth gap is indeed also racial in the US, even if it now evident that a portion of white America is falling into similar misery. For Latin American countries, you can see a similar phenomenon with the gap between the native Indian community and European descendants.

Yet I still will argue that you can be compared to other countries.

The main purpose of the police is the same. What differs is that the US legal system is far more about retribution and punishment than a long term effort to prevent crime. This in my view is one of the cultural facts where in order to change the culture should be changed. And can the culture change? Yes, but likely it won't as the discussion never will go so far to make it clear for the population where the problem lies.

If having police brutality on camera doesn't end up making police accountable, the whole thing is rotten. — fdrake

Many times the real solution is just to form a new police department. Let everybody go, start from scratch.

Well, It's not hard to show that Mexico and Latin America do have bigger problems with police than the US, so it's not just anecdotal. This thread is going forward quickly, so could you link just what stats you were thinking?

No it isn't. Been there, lived there few years in childhood, your not so different from everybody else. Really.

Just look south at your border. Travel guides don't advise tourists when coming to the US the following way: "If you are robbed or something happens to you, DO NOT CALL THE POLICE. Seek help from your Embassy. Avoid especially Interior Ministry Special Forces."

That is how an ordinary travel book explains police in Mexico. In many countries EVERYBODY distrusts the police and thinks that they are just thieves in uniform.

You have A LONG WAY to go just how bad the police can be.

So the US is totally incomparable to other nations. OK. :sad:

No it does not. I wrote a couple of paragraphs on it. Perhaps you can address what I said. — StreetlightX

So you think that the US so special, so different from anybody else, that any kind of comparison is useless? You don't think that other countries have minorities or poor people? That a large portion of the "customers" of the police are poor people?

Of course, perhaps it would indeed be better to compare the US to Mexico or Brazil, but I guess your legal system performs better than those and is less corrupt.

Now there's a good start.

It won't change everything, but these kind of reforms would contribute to changing the culture. Perhaps in a decade the police and police - civil relations would be different.

I certainly didn't say Trump was the root cause, but not only is he an accelerator, but the best example why the issue isn't resolved. And likely he will want more riots, more cars being burned and then send the military in. Not just the National Guard, but the Armed Forces. Trump desperately wants to do it to be the "Law and Order" President and eagerly wants the liberals to be appalled about the historical decision. It's all about him trying to get his followers to vote for him. Something that reminds me of how the Assad family stayed in power, actually.

C'mon man, I just wrote you a whole thing about the specific function and employment of the police as a matter of social policy in the US and all you can muster up is 'there are police in every country?'. You can do better than that. — StreetlightX

You have to understand that the police does the same thing in other countries as in the US. You don't have an Apartheid system or Jim Crow in place, what you have is a police culture and a society where this kind of behavior happens and is tolerated, not an open institutionalized harassment by the police what you have in totalitarian countries or earlier in South Africa. It really goes down to the culture of specific police departments as the police isn't an uniform single institution like the FBI.

Why is it? In that thread StreetlightX insults several people, calling them stupid, fuck wits and such. Is that okay? — I like sushi

No. Reminding people, even mods and admins, of the present rules usually works.

This is a philosophy forum so people are indeed logical when following the rules.

Never saw that remark, but noticed earlier that Chester was getting a little bit agitated. Too bad, but that's a clear case for banning.

I mentioned earlier that police terror in the US is a matter of social policy. One further observation in support of this: simply consider the difference in the magnitude of state mobilization between COVID and this. For COVID, the American State barely lifted a finger - in fact fumbled with every excuse possible in order not to lift a finger, save for bailing up the richest strata of society. That's the abdication of social provision I mentioned. For this, you're seeing massive State mobilization on a scale unseen since ... I don't know. I don't know what this compares with. — StreetlightX

The Police is part of social policy in every country, StreetlightX.

I think the inability for America to solve this becomes crystal clear in the response of President Donald Trump. Apart from his usual failings to give any coherent answer (what does he mean by holding up a bible in front of a closed church?) to actual real world events. His abilities lies in inventing nicknames to his political rivals and beind outrageous when things are great. Trump is an epitome of the inability of to understand that his response is exactly the problem. Oh sure, he remembers to remark that the killing of Mr. Floyd was a bad thing, but then he goes to be the "Law and Order" President against the rioters using, again due to his utter ignorance, similar language that was used in the 60's.





And nothing, nothing is said about police tactics, training, the whole way the system works, what would be those things really doing something about the institutional racism. That wouldn't cure everything, of course, but it would be a start. The discussion never comes even to that.

November 3, 2020 national referendum on the

• worst public health crisis since 1918
• worst unemployment crisis since 1929
• worst social unrest since 1968

and in the wake of the largest voter turnout - for 2018 midterm elections against the incumbent party - since 1914. — 180 Proof

Until Trump "postpones" the election... :joke:

I think in terms of media influence Trump's a much smaller issue than Murdoch and the Koch Brothers. — fdrake

Murdoch, Koch Brothers or George Soros, there will be allways these rich men who get a micro-orgasm when the US president calls to them (or they can call him whenever they like).

Yet these fat cats would be happy with politicians that are normal and don't make a mess of everything.

Not actually living in America, I grew up in the UK and moved to Norway a few years ago. — fdrake

Norway!? Well, then you know first hand what Nordic socialism is like.

The UK's much closer to America than here, and has much the same issues, but the police are less militarised in the UK so there are less hospitalisations and deaths despite performing the same societal function. — fdrake

Yet it's telling that the country you live in and which was described by Michael Moore to be an utopia experienced one of the worst right wing terrorist attacks anywhere in the World with quite a deliberate agenda (attacking social democrat party youths). And Norway did (in my view) the correct thing: it prevented any messages or proclamations spreading in media from the lone terrorist (which prevented copy cats). The terrorist Breivik was given a special form of a prison sentence that can be extended indefinitely, so he is not walking out with the typical maximum sentence under Norwegian law.

Even if the above isn't related to the subject, I just try to show that other countries do have similar problems and do sometimes take drastic measures, yet the way the police is perceived there surely isn't as in the US. But the generally they (the police) are doing the same thing. Above all, the police are part of the society in every country and there are minorities in every country.

So what is so different in

Norway:


the Netherlands:


Finland:

The thing is that most adults can see these "protests" for what they are and places like this forum are bubbles that in no way represent the dominant public feeling towards people rioting and looting. I think , if it continues, Trump will win a second term. — Chester

So how many protests have you genuinely seen from the present ones?

The left forgot a long time ago that it needs to bring the population with it, instead it works against what most of the population want and then wonders why it is so despised by people like me...people who decades ago would have probably voted Labour/democrat but now wouldn't touch those parties with a barge poll. They are vermin. — Chester

Just replace in comment "left" with "right", and that's how the other side thinks exactly too.

They even use the same words and descriptions that you use, Chester:

And that's why I talk that the problem is the discourse, it's a toxic one.

The playing field isn't equal. There are media components that work against the interest of protesters, and it is always leftists who work against them. — fdrake

Not only that, but your politicians are basically prisoners of this stated discourse. It truly strangles genuine discussion.

Watched a short clip of Ted Cruz being interviewed by Fox News on the riots. The fact was the senator's comments were totally reasonable and he condemned the actions well, but the Fox News commentator started with this bizarre point of "do we know actually what was the cause of death?" Cruz could sideline this stupid question, but it tells how the separated media works.

Worst of all is Trump, that only makes the public discourse become worse.

Police terror is an economic-political strategy, not an accidental feature of current social reality. None of what has been happening can be understood in isolation of these factors. The last of the factors mentioned here - the need to separate the 'deserving' from the 'undeserving poor' is yet another reason to resist the bourgeois attempt to parse out 'rioters' from 'protesters'. Grievance comes as a package, and it affects not only 'deserving' grievers, but those - especially those - who have been so destitute that looting becomes a viable strategy of response.

Race, class, and institutional terror are inseparably bound. Those who want to package it up into little digestible pieces do nothing but help enforce injustice. — StreetlightX

Thanks for a long interesting answer.

Yet I feel that now you put the US to be quite different from other countries. Wouldn't there be some general factors in the civil/police relations that are factors here?

Or do you think that the police in the UK, Germany, France, Netherlands or Finland abide this kind of similar agenda and structure in the society? Or is your answer that the American situation is totally different?

I think it's because the ideological discourse is so skewed. Cops protect scared rich white people from their worst nightmares. In return, scared rich white people make them virtually untouchable. — Baden

I'm not so sure it's just the rich, that seems a bit of an exacerbation. I think even poor people do want police to perform well.

Yet were you hit the nail here in linking this to an ideological discourse. It's a perverse ideological discourse that engulfs the whole society into inaction and it keeps nothing happening. It is actually the discourse. The discourse keeps Americans from doing something about it.

The simple fact is that when looting starts (and of course, for Americans property is far more important than lives) there simply comes this point where conservatives rally with the police, want to take a hard line against looting, theft and rioting. The leftists still remember the issue what caused the riots and hence don't take the similar stance to conservative America. In fact, both sides, the leftists and the conservatives simply dig further to their trenches and those actions, either reforms to policing or taking a tougher stance on rioting start to seem as a let down of either sides objectives.

So yes, the real reason is the discourse itself. It is poisoned far before the topic of actual police conduct and training is discussed. Far before that the opposing sides have retreated to their ideological castles and see each other in a worse light than before. And then ANY kind of understanding of the other sides view becomes a "surrender" of the values your side has taken itself to defend.

That's why nothing happens.

I think these riots guarantee Trump gets a second term. Ordinary people do not want to see rioters and looters win, so the tougher Trump gets the more he wins. — Chester

More Americans die in the riots, the better for Trump!

His playbook is to instill more violence, more divisiveness. Attacking on Antifa and portraying them to be the domestic Al Qaeda / ISIS would be the best way to do it.

Since WHEN has the moron started using actual intelligence?

Nope, this is out from his idiotic playbook where Trump just wants more division, more hatred and in the end more chaos.

What could be a better approach to get antifa-protesters than declare them to be terrorists and enemies of the state? Those concerned about right-wing extremism taking over the Republic, because of Trump, will simply be reinforced in their views on how dire the situation is. Talk about counterproductive moves.

The interesting question is why the US simply is unable to truly reform it's police? In fact the police has started to imitate the military more and more.

As we have seen from US history, these killings create demonstrations and riots... and then things go back to normal with only perhaps the worst hit cities ending up in a downward economic spiral. Otherwise life goes back to normal. Nothing changes.

The only "improvement" is that usually less people are killed in the riots by the police and the national guard as before. So...that's a start???

Would the police have acted the way they did with Floyd if the members of that community were walking around armed with guns? I’m not sure they would have. — NOS4A2

Lol.

If you haven't seen this classic of what the difference is with a white man carrying openly an AR-15 and a black man doing the same and how different is the reaction of the police, you should watch it. Tells far more than a thousand words.

If Turing thought that a computer AI has only to mimic a human to qualify as conscious then it seems he would also think the p-zombies are conscious. — TheMadFool

Did he have that in mind? I haven't read his papers well enough to make that specific conclusion. If you have a direct quote, feel free to enlighten me.

Because, again, how do I know I'm not responding to a very clever bot here either, but another human being?

I can make the argument that your responses seem to be made by a conscious human being. But that assumption doesn't mean I think p-zombies are conscious. What I do know is that we don't understand consciousness yet, simple as that.

Will it really be a depression? Or will the economy lurch toward online retail in a way that's irreversible? — frank

I think there's an accurate definition for an economy to be in a depression, but this kind of unemployment will have a big effect. Naturally nobody will admit it, of course.

Plus, could you explain how China deals with an economic downturn vs the American way? — frank

It's all about aggregate demand. Rule 1: Unemployed people or those believing that they might be unemployed don't spend as crazy. Rule 2: People are afraid and for a reason about the pandemic, which has already changed their spending habits. 3) Social distancing measures have hit the service sector, which employs the most people.

For comparison, when real estate booms go bust they create the problems because a) people have their life savings usually in real estate and b) houses aren't built by robots in China, but local construction workers. Now, just think how much more does the service sector employ than construction? You can see from the unemployment stats the size.

It's not about China at all, it's about the whole World. My and your country and Sweden or Brazil have already been affected.

Or put it in another way: How would you think aggregate demand would suddenly come back to the prior levels? You think people will start taking that vacation to Italy they were planning to do? You think people are going to buy that new house when people are getting laid of at their work? Are you going out just as you were before the pandemic and do you think other people will do so now when we don't have a vaccine and the pandemic hasn't been declared over?

I guess the point was: something is intelligent, if it is called intelligent because it appears to be intelligent.
The judgement is already made by people, not by some arbitrary criteria. — Heiko

The reasoning in Turing's test is quite similar to yours: that we'd just notice it, because we are conscious. Yet the fact is that appearances can be deceptive.

A great short video explaining just why the economic depression is here to say and why a V-shaped recovery won't happen even if so called "lock-downs" are lifted:



Just to make one emphasis on this: a 90% economic "recovery" is a HUGE economic depression of -10%. It is something of epic historical proportions seldom seen in the economic history of various countries.

The early 2020's will suck.

I think Flynn is going to be one the most darkest figures in the history of US Intelligence services even if he is eclipsed by Donald Trump altogether.

He is in a way for the US what the Cambridge Five were to the British intelligence services. The scars that the US intelligence services have taken from the Trump ordeal will be far greater than the British suffered from it's famous Russian spy ring inside it's intelligence establishment. Those of course were career spies who understood what they had done, just like the American turncoats during the Cold War, Trump is more likely simply not have understood what strange bedfellows he got with his profitable Russian contacts. Who could have known that the FBI's mission is to look at what hostile foreign intelligence services do in the US?

Of course the whole Trump episode in US history will likely play out like the war in Iraq: to admit that the justification for the Iraqi invasion, the hoax reasoning of then nonexistent WMD's (yes, before Iraq did have a WMD project) and the fictitious link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was a sham that took years to go through especially in right wing circles. I remember well that on the older PF site some people were adamantly defending the "official" line" for the war in Iraq as a sign of patriotism. Freedom fries and all that. It will take a GOP / right-wing politician to say what is known even now as the truth, and in this case the huge irony was that it was Donald Trump himself that popped the fictitious bubble of the Iraq war and WMD's himself and buried the older Bush brother in the race for the Republican candidacy.

Yes, he could be a capable asshole like Putin. As it stands, Donnie's incompetence is somewhat of a blessing. — Marchesk

Especially for Vladimir. :grin:

But it*s so also for the Saudi's. Any other US President likely would have given them a tougher time especially with the war in Yemen, all the bullshit towards Qatar and for the palace coup, not to mention the sloppy killing of a opposition member in Turkey. But just to play on Trump's narcissism and waving money in front of Jared does the trick...





Yet Bibi really has made it into an art!

The following equality based on the Turing test holds:

Conscious being = True AI = P-Zombie

If so, we're forced to infer either that true AI and p-zombies are conscious or that there is no such thing as consciousness. — TheMadFool

Starting from the fact that we cannot agree on just what is consciousness and have big problems in deciding just what is and what isn't conscious, it's hardly surprising that even a brilliant mind like Turing would be vague on the subject.

After all, a far more simple and theoretical issue like calculation, computability / uncomputability puzzles us still quite a lot.

Yet the the proponents of computers and computer theory have been very willing to declare AI to be actuality even now, whereas many laymen still consider real AI to be that truly conscious robotic chap that indeed has a mind of it's own. Needless to say, a smart program can pass the Turing test many times. But with luck a clever recording would do that also sometimes...

I really wondered how long it would go before the most well known twitter user ends up in a fight with his main media outlet. It took a long time, actually!

Likely Twitter has seen enough to make the decision to treat Trump as the fool he is.

Talk about a lame duck...

Professor Karol Sikora is stating that cancer deaths are being recorded as Covid deaths in England. — Chester

About Prof. Sikora:

Sikora is very critical of cancer care available on the National Health Service (NHS). During US President Barack Obama's push to enact healthcare reform, in early May 2009 he appeared in a Republican Party attack ad in the US criticizing National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the NHS. In the attack ad, Sikora was referred to as professor of oncology at Imperial College.

Imperial College London is seeking legal advice on ways to prevent Sikora from using any title suggesting he has a position or formal association with it.

Far too long for Trump to be able to even browse it through, altogether to understand it. Far better would be to say that it is a draft floated in the Trump administration (if correct).

A really simple way to understand this is through STRATEGIC RESERVES. Strategic reserves and the ability to produce nationally can be in a crisis (war, pandemic, etc.) a smart thing to do. Usually

There's a fine line between protectionism and having national resilience and an the ability to cope in a situation where the international trade and globalization breaks down for some reason. Having a 100% ability to produce everything domestically is not only overkill, but a recipe for an economic disaster. Basically if you wall off domestic production from global competition, the end result is a very poor and costly industry that lacks competitiveness.