#economic zones

[carlocarrasco]

DTI exceeds 2024 investment approval target

More than P1.6 trillion in approved investments have been confirmed and this means that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) exceeded its target for 2024, according to a news article by the Philippine News Agency (PNA). To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the PNA news article. Some parts in boldface… The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said approved…

[amereid1960]

النموذج الصيني في تنمية الصادرات - دراسة تحليلية

النموذج الصيني في تنمية الصادرات – دراسة تحليلية النموذج الصيني في تنمية الصادرات – دراسة تحليلية الكاتب : شهرزاد براوين الملخص: تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى تحليل النموذج الصيني في تنمية الصادرات، وتناولت الدراسة قضية تحول الاقتصاد الصيني لاقتصاد مو��ه للتصدير من خلال تحليل المقومات الأساسية للنموذج الصيني في تنمية الصادرات وت��ثلت أهمها في المناطق الاقتصادية والإصلاحات التجارية وسياسات تنمية الصادرات…

[alewaanewspaper1960]

النموذج الصيني في تنمية الصادرات - دراسة تحليلية

النموذج الصيني في تنمية الصادرات – دراسة تحليلية النموذج الصيني في تنمية الصادرات – دراسة تحليلية الكاتب : شهرزاد براوين الملخص: تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى تحليل النموذج الصيني في تنمية الصادرات، وتناولت الدراسة قضية تحول الاقتصاد الصيني لاقتصاد موجه للتصدير من خلال تحليل المقومات الأساسية للنموذج الصيني في تنمية الصادرات وتمثلت أهمها في المناطق الاقتصادية والإصلاحات التجارية وسياسات تنمية الصادرات…

[dream-world-universe]

France, one of the oldest nations on Earth: France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north, Germany to the northeast, Switzerland to the east, Italy and Monaco to the southeast, Andorra and Spain to the south, and a maritime. Wikipedia

[mosstrades]

im having an absolute unadulterated blast with the Ethersea prologue for many many reasons, it's beautiful and exceeds all my expectations.. but also. there's many moments here that genuinely make me go "oh god damn, these people are Americans." the Quiet Year system is a profoundly fascinating and revealing game - nothing tells you quite as much about how somebody sees the world than asking them to imagine a new one.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Being “Realistic”

Some people will argue that this is not a “realistic” strategy for the global warming crisis because of the need to make major moves away from fossil fuel burning in the immediate future. The process of organizing and building a powerful grassroots labor movement is probably going to be quite protracted. Thus various “democratic socialists” will argue that it is more practical to seek reforms through the electoral systems.

But that strategy faces the notorious problem of the inherent tendency of political bureaucracies and politicians to seek accommodation to capitalist interests. Socialists who support the electoralist strategy will concede that they need the potential for mass scale struggle and disruption to push the political leaderships for reform policies such as the “Green New Deal” — pushing for rapid shift of electricity production and transport sectors away from reliance on the burning of fossil fuels. But the best way to build the capacity of the working class to engage in this level of social struggle and disruption is through the kind of grassroots movement building that green syndicalists advocate. So, in fact, our strategy is realistic after all.

[phoenixyfriend]

Ko-fi prompt from @thisarenotarealblog:

There's a street near me that has eight car dealerships all on the same lot- i counted. it mystifies me that even one gets enough sales to keep going- but 8?? is there something you can tell me that demystifies this aspect of capitalism for me?

I had a few theories going in, but had to do some research. Here is my primary hypothesis, and then I'll run through what they mean and whether research agrees with me:

Sales make up only part of a dealership's income, so whether or not the dealership sells much is secondary to other factors.

Dealerships are put near each other for similar reasons to grouping clothing stores in a mall or restaurants on a single street.

Zoning laws impact where a car dealership can exist.

Let's start with how revenue works for a car dealership, as you mentioned 'that even one gets enough sales to keep going' is confusing. For this, I'm going to be using the Sharpsheets finance example, this NYU spreadsheet, and this Motor1 article.

This example notes that the profit margin (i.e. the percentage of revenue that comes out after paying all salaries, rent, supply, etc) for a car dealership is comparatively low, which is confirmed by the NYC sheet. The gross profit margin (that is to say, profits on the car sale before salaries, rent, taxes) is under 15% in both sources, which is significantly lower than, say, the 50% or so that one sees in apparel or cable tv.

Cars are expensive to purchase, and can't be sold for much more than you did purchase them. However, a low gross profit margin on an item that costs tens of thousands of dollars is still a hefty chunk of cash. 15% gross profit of a $20,000 car is still $3,000 profit. On top of that, the dealership will charge fees, sell warranties, and offer upgrades. They may also have paid deals to advertise or push certain brands of tire, maintenance fluids, and of course, banks that offer auto loans. So if a dealership sells one car a day, well, that's still several thousand dollars coming in, which is enough to pay the salaries of most of the employees. According to the Motor1 article, "the average gross profit per new vehicle sits at $6,244" in early 2022.

There is also a much less volatile, if also much smaller, source of revenue in attaching a repairs and checkup service to a dealership. If the location offers repairs (either under warranty or at a 'discounted' rate compared to a local, non-dealership mechanic), state inspections, and software updates, that's a recurring source of revenue from customers that aren't interested in purchasing a car more than once a decade.

This also all varies based on whether it's a brand location, used vs new, luxury vs standards, and so on.

I was mistaken as to how large a part of the revenue is the repairs and services section, but the income for a single dealership, on average, does work out math-wise. Hypothesis disproven, but we've learned something, and confirmed that income across the field does seem to be holding steady.

I'm going to handle the zoning and consolidation together, since they overlap:

Consolidation is a pretty easy one: this is a tactic called clustering. The expectation is that if you're going to, say, a Honda dealership to look at a midsize sedan, and there's a Nissan right next door, and a Ford across the street, and a Honda right around the corner, you might as well hit up the others to see if they have better deals. This tactic works for some businesses but not others. In the case of auto dealerships, the marketing advantage of clustering mixes with the restrictions of zoning laws.

Zoning laws vary by state, county, and township. Auto dealerships can generally only be opened on commercially zoned property.

I am going to use an area I have been to as an example/case study.

This pdf is a set of zoning regulations for Suffolk County, New York, published 2018, reviewing land use in the county during 2016. I'm going to paste in the map of the Town of Huntington, page 62, a region I worked in sporadically a few years ago, and know mostly for its mall and cutesy town center.

Those red sections are Commercially Zoned areas, and they largely follow some large stroads, most notably Jericho Turnpike (the horizontal line halfway down) and Walt Whitman Road (the vertical line on the left). The bulge where they intersect is Walt Whitman Mall, and the big red chunk in the bottom left is... mostly parking. That central strip, Jericho Turnpike, and its intersection with Walt Whitman... looks like this:

All those red spots are auto dealerships, one after another.

So zoning laws indicate that a dealership (and many other types of commercial properties) can only exist in that little red strip on the land use map, and dealerships take up a lot of space. Not only do they need places to put all of the cars they are selling, but they also need places to park all their customers and employees.

This is where we get into the issue of parking minimums. There is a recent video from Climate Town, with a guest spot by NotJustBikes. If you want to know more about this aspect of zoning law, I'd recommend watching this video and the one linked in the description.

Suffolk county does not have parking minimums. Those are decided on a town or village level. In this case, this means we are looking at the code set for the town of Huntington. (I was originally looking on the county level, and then cut the knot by just asking my real estate agent mom if she knew where I could find minimum parking regulations. She said to look up e360 by town, and lo and behold! There they are.)

(There is also this arcgis map, which shows that they are all within the C6 subset of commercial districting, the General Business District.)

Furniture or appliance store, machinery or new auto sales - 1 per 500 square feet of gross floor area

Used auto sales, boat sales, commercial nurseries selling at retail - 5 spaces for each use (to be specifically designated for customer parking) - Plus 1 for each 5,000 square feet of lot area

This is a bit odd, at first glance, as the requirements are actually much lower than that of other businesses, like drive-in restaurants (1 per 35 sqft) or department stores (1 per 200 sqft). I could not find confirmation on whether the 'gross floor area' of the dealership included only indoor spaces or also the parking lot space allotted to the objects for sale, but I think we can assume that any parking spaces used by merchandise do not qualify as part of the minimum. Some dealerships can have up to 20,000 gross sqft, so those would require 40 parking spaces reserved solely for customers and employees. Smaller dealerships would naturally need less. One dealership in this area is currently offering 65 cars of varying makes and models; some may be held inside the building, but most will be on the lot, and the number may go higher in other seasons. If we assume they need 30 parking spaces for customers and employees, and can have up to 70 cars in the lot itself, they are likely to have 100 parking spaces total.

That's a lot of parking.

Other businesses that require that kind of parking requirement are generally seeing much higher visitation. Consider this wider section of the map:

The other buildings with comparative parking are a grocery store (Lidl) and a post office (can get some pretty high visitation in the holiday season, but also just at random).

Compare them, then, to the "old town" section of the same town.

There are a handful of public parking areas nearby (lined in blue), whereas the bulk of the businesses are put together along this set of streets. While there is a lot of foot traffic and vehicle passage, which is appealing for almost any business, opening a car dealership in this area would require not only buying a building, but also the buildings surrounding it. You would need to bulldoze them for the necessary parking, which would be prohibitively expensive due to the cost of local real estate... and would probably get shot down in the application process by city planners and town councils and so on. Much easier to just buy land over in the strip where everyone's got giant parking lots and you can just add a few extra cramped lanes for the merchandise.

Car dealerships also tend to be very brightly lit, which hits a lot of NIMBY sore spots. It's much easier to go to sleep if you aren't right next to a glaring floodlight at a car dealership, so it's best if we just shove them all away from expensive residential, which means towards the loud stroads, which means... all along these two major roads/highways.

And if they're all limited to a narrow type of zoning already, they might as well take advantage of cluster marketing and just all set up shop near each other in hopes of stealing one of the other's customers.

As consumers, it's also better for us, because if we want to try out a few different cars from a few different brands, it's pretty easy to just go one building down to try out the Hyundai and see if it's better than a Chevy in the same price group.

(Prompt me on ko-fi!)

[chiropteracupola]

william laurence forever in a state of numb astonishment at the fact that other people are experiencing success in life...

[witchofthesouls]

Ayoooooo, Primeval Anon here, to respond to your response (don't worry too much about how long you took to answer, it was worth the wait)!

Omfg, you had me hooked in when you mentioned Bloodborne-influenced lore. I love the hell out of Bloodborne, and just in general From Software's Dark Fantasy settings. And I love that premise. It definitely fits in with the Quintessons clearly aquatically-influenced nature.

I also enjoy the idea of the Primes balancing each other out with their different natures. As well as the idea that the Quintessons kinda... cannibalized him... fucking gnarly lol.

Just imagine, post-occupation, there's these series skirmishes, perhaps even smaller-scale wars, between the og Prime worshipping groups and the the emerging sects of Quintesson-influenced cultists. Something like

Priest from Kaon: For it is said that in his wisdom, Megatronus- Priest from [SETTLEMENT NAME REDACTED]: You mean Mortilus? Priest from Kaon: :| *The settlement of [NAME REDACTED] was procedurally, systematically decimated in their war with the Kaonites*

Now, I don't know about other continuities they've featured in, like Aligned, but in G1 they definitely had some sort of caste system. Only ranking I can immediately think of are the "Judges", which would be the ones people generally think of when it comes to the Quintessons, there were a few other variants if I'm remembering it right. There was a video that I saw that talked about this, I'll have to go and re-watch it.

Anyways yeah, maybe the castes are made up of different sub-species within the Quintessons genus? And then under them come the Sharkticons and Allicons (Those weird croc-like dudes who nab Kup and Hotrod after they end up on Quintessa). Maybe they were at one point Cybertronian Wilders who were abducted by the Quintessons during the occupation and, through a mix of selective breeding and genetic modification, were able to turn them in their own obedient, self-replenishing army, that whenever the Quintessons aren't enacting some campaign of destruction or conquest, just kinda vibe in the oceans of Quintessa alongside the local fauna of the planet.

Y'know... now that I think about it, since the Quintessons would clearly inherit Quintus' unhinged daydreamer work ethic, do you think they'd also fuck with the wildlife of their homeworld, perhaps even the planet itself??? Gods, I hate how the Quintessons are so underdeveloped because they exist in the same universe as the Transformers.

Yeah, I'm really disappointed how the Quintessons as a whole are really underutilized as characters and background lore.

I mean, the shit is right there!

Me, if given the chance to sit down with a new Transformers team to talk about leveraging the connection between Cybertron, Earth, and Quintessa with supernatural elements:

Personally, I'm more of the "Quintessons fucked with their own planet" camp. Don't get me wrong, the Quintessons had established a massive empire to command resources, including bodies, but the Allicons and Sharkticons seem to be directly from Quintessa. Both fit the aquatic theme going on. Plus, sharks are natural predators of cephalopods and attack injured or sick whales (another predator of squids). While alligators don't usually eat cephalopods, they are an apex predator that does go on land and will eat just about anything. Soooo, easy clean up as well as population control on campaign?

I totally believe it's within character for the highest castes of Quintessons to be cyborgs/techno-organic instead of full mechanoid because of certain kinds of resistances and the way they control their fully mechanical populations. And they would totally be in genetic modification, selective breeding, and terraforming as a whole because 1) absolute control, 2) meshes Quintus' own special interests with the Quintessons' military and economic might, and 3) sustainability, what's that!?

The last point is the kicker because it's what really cements their own origins via Quintus Prime. That particular Prime truly believed that life should flourish at all costs. The problem? Environments can only support so much before nature sets up its own checks and balances, or the entire thing ends up collapsing.

Well, Quintus bypassed nature's complex and fragile systems and would have shown his organic creations how to overcome their own limitations: biological, physical, and environmental. He's like the guy that would successfully crossbreed potato and kudzu because the resulting crop would feed millions upon millions... at the astronomical cost of arable land, soil health, decline of biodiversity, and property management due to accumulated damages.

Quintus doesn't worry about that because it's part of the process! He's collecting data for future reference and starts working on fertilizers to support the crossbreeds immense nutritional demands, animal husbandry so herbivores can chomp down on the remains, and construction materials/architectural designs resistant to plant growth damage.

Quintus, you crazy scientist of a dreamer, that's not the fucking point!

So yeah, because Quintus didn't have his siblings to kick his ass about sustainable measures (because everything from medicinal to food to construction had to come some somewhere), Quintessa got overharvested or destroyed. Because of the immense deprivation, Quintessons went colonial on their planetary neighbors. Because they succeeded with their neighbors and never thought to change their way of life because of yummy resources, they went on campaign into distant systems where they cut their teeth against mechanical species and subjugated them.

And because the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie pattern would take way too long to get to my point: the Quintessons literally built their way to conquered Cybertron, fuck that planet and its indigenous people and fauna over in the spectacular fashion they did to Quintessa, got kicked off as their empire almost collapsed, but literally had a direct hand to the civil war between Autobots and Decepticons that lead to the final stand off on Earth.

(Funny enough, the civil war was on a scale so massive that it encompassed galaxies and disrupted the current rendition of the Quintesson Pan Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere. They literally built the greatest threats to their own empires. Who would have thought?!)

Religious tensions after the Quintessons been kicked off would have been an interesting direction to explore. Even life during the occupation as the Thirteen would have been symbols of rebellion versus the Quintessons' rabid methods to obfuscate their own origins as well as tactics to break the cultural roots and ties of new subjugated planets.

Because old names become illegal, new epitaphs or names are given to undermine the regime and eventually become the new cultural practice. Then, there's the cultural blend between the natives and the colonial powers as well as the generations purposely raised in a certain cultural mindset. Since the Quintessons took control of the Well, it's a safe bet that they also took control of the institutional pillars of the society: religion, science, and law.

Primes are still titanic figures on post-occupation Cybertron, so perhaps Quintessons had only limited success in destroying mythic tales and religious traditions. Because the newer generations took on the Quintessons' distaste towards beasts and untouched nature as well as kept Quintessons' way of social hierarchy that they knew.

Quintessons emphasized function as Cybertronians (and other mechanoids) are machines compared to them. All machines have certain functions, no? Some machines are meant for certain roles, no? Machines are only capable as much as programmed, but Quintessons are far more advanced because they overcame their limitations with their own creative endeavors!

Quintessons basically treated Cybertronians as living appliances, gadgets, and animals. To them, a Cybertronian was a more fun and dynamic Siri or Alexa than a real person. Sure, a Quint could bond and form an emotional attachment, but it's still not truly 'alive.' And they codified that into their own laws.

Basically, Quintessons would have been okay with Prima and his Guiding Hand. They would have propped up his specific actions on how civilization should be (cement more tensions between city-states and Wilder tribes and unregulated environmental policies), switch up or change key mythology (Prima and Megatronus being split-spark twins that rule together into Prima being the sole Sun and Megatronus becoming a late brother that became the Great Evil that became jealous of the Sun and destroyed Life.), and straight up destroyed or damaged historic and culturally significant items and practices that deem it otherwise (the Well of Allsparks; removing the golden horns of fully-trained doctors that pay tribute to Liege Maximo's ties to medicine; the removal of various sigils of specific Primes and associated groupings, Onyx's Mask removed from stages as it functioned as Comedy and Tragedy masks).

[stillnaomi]

The DPRK's Special Economic Zones (SEZ)

the dprk has a reputation of being a hermit kingdom, isolating itself from the rest of the world. the truth is that the DPRK has been trying to increase it's international trade for decades, but increasing US led sanctions have stymied its efforts

in 1991, the DPRK established the Rajin-Sonbong Special Economic Zone as an incentive to foreign investment. since then, over 20 more special economic zones have been setup, mostly near the Chinese border, with hopes of attracting Chinese manufacturers. unfortunately, investment is slow. foreign investors seem to be put off by a mix of factors including the unpredictable sanctions, the lack of rule of law, and the lack of infrastructure – the DPRK's roads are largely in bad repair, and the rail system is antiquated and unreliable

some foreign manufacturers do business there anyway and some send their goods out to Russia or China to be labelled as being made in those countries. but overall, most of the world is too spooked by the DPRK's pariah status to invest there. the increase of sanctions in 2016, in response to a DPRK weapons test, even saw their largest trading partner, Japan, cut them off completely

since Kim Jong-un became leader of the DPRK, they've made the economy their principal priority, putting it either on par with or ahead of their nuclear weapons development and military in importance. they're determined to build an economy that serves their people well. all they need is for western powers to stop getting in their way

[kramlabs]

[carlocarrasco]

Economy of the Philippines to keep growing above 6% in 2024 and 2025

Recently, an economist predicted that the economy of the Philippines will keep growing above 6% this year and next year, according to a Philippine News Agency (PNA) news article. To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the PNA news article. Some parts in boldface… The Philippine economy is expected to remain one of the fastest growing economies in the region, with growth…

[gmos]

one thing id like to do when i become a twitch streamer is get really fucked up and then open blender

[tomorrowusa]

Saturday October 7th is Putin's birthday – we should regard it as a day of ill omen.

It's Putin's second birthday since he launched his three-day "special operation" to conquer Ukraine. He must have some idea by now of what an international laughing stock his inept army is.

Putin's latest dubious effort seems to be mining the Black Sea.

Britain has accused Russia of plotting to sabotage civilian cargo ships loaded with Ukrainian grain by planting sea mines on the approaches to the country’s Black Sea ports. Based on what it said was declassified intelligence, the UK said Russia did not want to directly attack merchant vessels using Ukraine’s newly created humanitarian corridor with missiles, but instead try to destroy them covertly. Russia would then seek to blame Ukraine for the loss of any shipping in an attempt to evade responsibility, the British Foreign Office continued, and the UK said it was going public in order to deter Moscow from carrying out the plan. James Cleverly, the UK foreign secretary, accused Russia of the “pernicious targeting” of civilian shipping: “The world is watching – and we see right through Russia’s cynical attempts to lay blame on Ukraine for their attacks.” Merchant ships carrying Ukrainian grain for export have been under threat since July, when Russia pulled out of a year-long initiative designed to safeguard food exports despite the war between the two countries.

Contrary to what Putin thinks, Russia doesn't own the Black Sea. It's divided into exclusive economic zones (EEZ) related to the countries which border it. Three of those countries (Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey) happen to be NATO members.

If Russia places mines in the EEZs of NATO countries or if Russian mines drift into their waters, it risks NATO activating Article 5 – the mutual defense proviso in the NATO treaty.

Bulgaria has already been holding discussions with NATO regarding Russian provocations.

Bulgaria, NATO discuss response to Russian blockade in Black Sea

In the meantime, Putin's Russia continues to commit war crimes even as I type this.

Ukraine updates: Russian attack kills 48 at shop in Kharkiv

Russia has no fucking business in Ukraine. FULL STOP. The only possible moral response to Putin's Red Nazism is to give Ukraine all the assistance it needs.

If you are in the United States and have a Republican member of the House representing your district, tell him or her to get their ass in gear and quit using aid to Ukraine as an internal party political football.

Representatives | house.gov

If they have a district office not far from you then consider paying a personal visit to state your views. Your tax dollars are paying for that office – not for them to find new ways to grovel to Donald Trump.

[amplexadversary]

Just to clarify, a bunch of little groups cooperating with a common goal in mind is usually perfectly bengin, and necessary to get anything to happen, ever.

Having one biiiiiiiiiiig group though, that sets off alarm bells.

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

Thoughts about Cuba and America's relationship with them?

i mean, cuba seems like a beautiful country with a vibrant people and culture. i would love to visit. and it should be ours.

however, i don't like commies. we should have been more persistent in getting rid of them.

that said, i do genuinely believe in some sense of pan-americanism. and so i believe in further warming relations with cuba and just trying to americanize them slowly over time through cultural/economic imperialism.