[PEN-L:10473] MAI Y2K
Date: Sat, 07 Aug 1999 12:33:31 -0700 Resent-from: Patrick Kerans [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Candice Mitchell - General Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED] (by way of Connie Fogal [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Subject: Y2KMAI Hello Connie, It was a pleasure chatting with you...Here are some interesting links that definately point to a Global Free Trade Agreement (MAI) being put in place during Y2K disruptions. This site is the Pentagon Think tankhave a look at who was and is involved with the think-tank and the "M" curve. When I first came across this site I was blown away, so I called Dr. Thomas Barnett and had a lengthly conversation with him regarding the info he was presenting. I sent a copy of this site to all the members of the House of Commons about 3 months ago http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/6926/y2kproj.htmhttp: //www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/6926/y2kproj.htm This is the official World Bank Y2K web-site, talks about the vulnerabilty of developing nations and Y2K http://www.worldbank.org/y2k/pages/english/elinks.htmhttp://www.worldbank ..org/y2k/pages/english/elinks.htm The site below is interesting because it is based in Washington DC and the Head of the Advisory Committee is Sen. Robert Bennett who is also the head of the US Senate Committee on the Year 2000 http://www.y2kcenter.org/http://www.y2kcenter.org/ This is the CIA map of the world and the Y2K risks http://www.msnbc.com/modules/Y2KInternational/map_nestframe.asphttp://www ..msnbc.com/modules/Y2KInternational/map_nestframe.asp The United Nations Working Group, also discusses the vulnerability of developing nations. http://www.un.org/members/y2k/y2k2nd/http://www.un.org/members/y2k/y2k2nd/ This is the state of California info site the matrix pretty well describes what kind of disruptions may happen http://www.oes.ca.gov/oeshomep.nsfhttp://www.oes.ca.gov/oeshomep.nsf This statement is from the December 1998 Auditors General Report on the Year 2000. 20.117 Embedded systems and devices are emerging as a significant concern. Numbering in the billions, they perform a vast range of duties serving many domains such as science, engineering, manufacturing and health care. Experts have estimated that only a small percentage of these micro processors are date-sensitive. Even so, an estimated 20 million to 250 million could fail as a result of the millennium bug. http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/9820ce.htmlhttp://www.oa g-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/9820ce.html I will have the Bio to you over the Weekend and Y2Kit has been put in the mail to your office. Our Web-site is http://www.homecheck.netwww.homecheck.net Candice Mitchell General Manager SKF Millennium Sales Inc. 250-833-1970 work 250-832-7492 home . Bob Olsen, Toronto [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
[PEN-L:10470] Co-optation and Heterodoxy
I read a book this weekend that many may have read but I do recommend it: "The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism" by Thomas Frank, U of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1995. I was taken by two passages: "This book is a study of co-optation rather than counterculture, an analysis of the forces and logic that made rebel youth cultures so attractive to corporate decision-makers rather than a study of those cultures themselves. In doing so, it risks running afoul of what I will call the co-optation theory: faith in the revolutionary potential of 'authentic' counterculture combined with the notion that business mimics and mass-produces fake counterculture in order to cash in on a particular demographic and to subvert the great threat that 'real' counterculture represents. 'Who Built America?', the text book produced by the Social History project, includes a reproduction of the now-infamous '[The]Man Can't Bust Our Music' ad and this caption summary of co-optation theory: 'If you can't beat' em, absorb' em.' (p. 7) and: "...it was and remains difficult to distinguish precisely between authentic counterculture and fake: by almost every account, the counter-culture, as a mass movement distinct from the bohemias that preceded it, was triggered at least as much by developments in mass culture (particularly the arrival of the Beatles in 1964) as changes at the grass roots. Its heroes were rock stars and rebel celebrities, millionaire performers and employees of the culture industry; its greatest moments occurred on television, on the radio, at rock concerts, and in movies. From a distance of thirty years, its language and music seem anything but the authentic populist culture they yearned so desperately to be: from contived cursing to saitly communalism to the embarrassingly faked Woody Guthrie accents of Bob Dylan to the astoundingly pretentious works of groups like Iron Butterfly and The Doors, the relics of the counterculture reek of affectation and phoniness, the leisure-dreams of white suburban children like those who made up so much of the Grateful Dead's audience throughout the 1970s and 1980s." (p.8) So I wondered about the application of this dialectical model (what is counterculture vs "mainstream" culture; fake counterculture vs "real" counterculture; influence of counterculture on "mainstream" culture vs de facto co-optation of counter-culture by "mainstream" culture nominally passed off as increasing acceptance of aspects of "counterculture" within "mainstream" culture; etc ass applied to "Heterodox" versus "Orthodox" Economics. Real versus Fake Heterodoxy?; What does Heterodoxy really mean and what distinguishes a genuinely Heterodox approach from a Fake Heterodox approach or from an "Orthodox" approach? Why the use of "Heterodox instead of "Radical" or is Heterodoxy indeed synonomous with "Radical" or Radical-Left"? How much of Heterodoxy has been co-opted by the so-called "Orthodoxy" in order that the Heterodox might operate in some of the same "permissible" and "acceptable" media dominated by Orthodoxy? How much of Orthodoxy has been really challenged or co-opted by the Heterodox? How much of Heterodoxy is a co-opted caricature--of the caricatures of Radical Left held and spread by the Orthodoxy? How much of Heterodoxy is based on caricatures of the Orthodoxy? These were some of the questions that crossed my mind. I see all sorts of academic programs now openly proclaiming "heterodox" approaches available (after a thorough grounding in the orthodox) but I wonder if this is not simply analogous to the synthetic counterculture that is in reality neither "counter" or any kind of real sub or separate culture from the dominant culture of crass eogism, materialism, competition, racism, sexism, etc. Sort of like the fake Ken Kesey bus that tours the US for Coca Cola's "Fruitopia" drink line? Just some random musings. Jim C James Craven Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 *My Employer Has No Association With My Private/Protected Opinion*
[PEN-L:10469] Re: Re: Re: Re: FWD: Re: Baker on IP
Eugene writes: My point was different. I'm arguing that without product differentiation (or a "barrier to entry", which Jim addresses separately) -- there can't BE any profits. In other words, for an industry with large overhead costs, there can't be economic efficiency without some sort of "cooperation" (collusion) on production. I missed the assumption that the industry had large overhead costs. See below for an explanation of that assumption. BTW, I was never concerned with the issue of "economic efficiency" in this thread, since for capitalist enterprises, "minimum cost" operations means not _true_ economic efficiency but instead "minimum _private_ cost" operations, which can mean high external costs (e.g. pollution). That's inefficient. It isn't a question, in my view, of "appropriating" profits. If there is textbook competition -- which I think is the "cutthroat competition" which even Alfred Marshall deplored ... if there is that kind of competition (and without cooperation) then prices are driven below average costs and hence zero profits. (Even "normal profits" can't be earned.) Then, the story goes, firms will leave the industry. Of course then we are into Joan Robinson's "leets". This makes sense given the assumption of large overhead costs. I don't see why leaving the industry gets us into issues of "leets." Typically, the losers/leavers end up selling off their capacity at prices below what they paid. But see my comment at the end. In the airline industry, after deregulation, there was entry, excess capacity, and numerous bankruptcies. (Pan Am, Eastern, People's, Continental, Braniff, TWA, etc. etc. some went bankrupt twice.) But capacity did NOT leave the industry. The bankrupt airlines kept flying, and adding to the problem by cutting prices to get some contribution to overhead costs. This is partly the result of the nature of US bankruptcy laws. BTW, this seems a lot like the kind of problem that Brenner talks about in his ECONOMICS OF GLOBAL TURBULENCE, i.e., excessive capacity that doesn't go away. (The relevant theory part is at the beginning, in ch. 1.) It isn't just "Price setting power." I argue that price discrimination is necessary for existence. The airlines MUST gouge the business customers -- i. e. charge above (way above) average cost to get the revenue to be profitable. And then, they pick up additional revenue above marginal cost by pricing leisure fares for whatever they will bring. And then, they sell "distressed merchandise" on the internet. This isn't price setting power, per se, but pricing that is required if you have the cost structure of the airlines. ... It makes sense to me that given large overhead costs (relative to the total), cutthroat competition pushes individual firms to do all sorts of things, including cheating a little on safety standards now and then. [As some hairy old German guy wrote, "Free competition brings out the inherent laws of capitalist production, in the shape of external coercive laws having power over every individual capitalist."] I tell my students that the CAB (which regulated airline prices, acting as a government-sponsored cartel) and the FAA (which, among other things, regulates safety) were _complementary_. Protection from vicious competitive pressures gives individual firms "monopoly rents" that allow them to more easily live up to FAA standards. With "deregulation" (the abolition of the CAB), the FAA's job got much harder. Thus, Value-Jet and similar disasters. Does this make sense to you, Eugene? Why do universities discriminate so severely among their customers? They price for survival because they face large overhead costs. They gouge with very high tuition, then fill the seats with discounted prices. Universities call the discounted tickets "student aid" but it is just discounted seats. They are non-profits -- so where are the monoploy profits? They don't price in a discriminatory way to get "profits" but rather to survive. The only way to get total costs covered is to charge some more than average costs and some less -- but more than MC. If they set all prices at Average cost they wouldn't get enough students to cover total costs. Universities, to my mind, have differentiated products but are very competitive. The differentiated products gives them a little bit of monopoly and price-setting power (and the ability to price-discriminate). (By the way, it's hard to imagine universities being anything but differentiated. You can't have two places with identical faculties.) But the inter-firm competition means that they can't get "above-normal" profits. It's a little like monopolistic competition, except that the universities are not-for-profit, so that no "normal" profits are earned, either. Why are universities non-profit? It seems that running a for-profit university (like one of Chris Whittle's for-profit schools) only is workable as long as _all_ universities are
[PEN-L:10468] labor day
Monday, August 30, 1999 Commentary Missing in Action: Media Images of Real Workers By MATT WITT, Special to the Baltimore Sun As the Labor Day weekend approaches, we will see advertisements for back-to-school sales, reports on holiday traffic deaths and recipes for backyard barbecues. What we won't see is much reporting on the lives of people who labor in the nation's offices, factories and service industries. There isn't much coverage of how jobs are changing in America or of the growing gap in wealth between those who do the work and those who profit from it. Issues of work and class are largely invisible, not just on Labor Day but year-round. Rarely do we see stories exploring important questions facing working families. For example: * Why is the average entry-level wage at least one-fifth less than it was 20 years ago, with starting pay declining even for new college graduates? * What business strategies are leading the shift to "contingent" labor--the part-time, temporary or subcontracted jobs that make up 30% of the work force? * What has forced the average married couple to work 326 more hours a year than 20 years ago to maintain its buying power? A study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal media-watchdog group, found that the evening news programs of CBS, ABC and NBC recently devoted only 2% of their total air time to workers' issues, including child care, the minimum wage, and workplace safety and health. During a full year, the broadcasts reportedly spent a total of 13 minutes on job safety and health, while an average of more than 16 workers die daily from work-related injuries and more than 650,000 annually suffer back, wrist or other injuries from poorly designed workstations and repetitive motion. Although local television news shows are full of "how-to" consumer stories--how to find good eyeglasses, how to choose a baby-sitter, how to stay fit--they rarely give advice on problems at work. Not only are work-related topics missing in the media, but so are workers. Studies of ABC's "Nightline" and PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" found that almost all guests were corporate or government officials, politicians or professors, while fewer than 1% were non-elite workers or their representatives. A general examination of news reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post (or the Los Angeles Times) finds few sources who are workers or union representatives. ABC reporter Sam Donaldson was candid in a magazine interview about the media's practice of turning mainly to the corporate and political elite for on-camera comment. "You can't come to me and say, 'Sam, I know you're on deadline, you need a comment on such and such, go out and take a chance on Mr. X.' No, I'm sorry, folks, I don't have time to take a chance on Mr. X." Working people are also nearly invisible in television entertainment programming. Heads of households were working-class characters in only 11% of prime-time network family series from 1946 to 1990, according to a study by Rider University professor Richard Butsch. When working-class characters are shown, they often are portrayed as "dumb, immature, irresponsible or lacking in common sense," Butsch noted, referring to shows such as "The Honeymooners," "The Flintstones," "All in the Family" and "The Simpsons." Public television doesn't do much better, according to a study of two years of PBS prime-time programming by City University of New York's Committee for Cultural Studies. Only about one hour a month dealt with the lives and concerns of workers, while nearly 10 times that much time was spent on the upper classes. A number of factors contribute to media bias on labor issues. One is that the news media are owned by big corporations, with strong interests and opinions. NBC, for example, which might be expected to inform working people about international trade agreements that make it easier for U.S. corporations to exploit foreign workers in cheap-labor havens such as Mexico, is owned by General Electric--one of the companies practicing such exploitation. A second factor is the influence of advertisers, who insist on a "positive environment" for their ads--meaning one free of controversial issues or opinions that clash with their corporate agendas. A third is the class background of editors, producers and others who make decisions about media coverage. Many live like corporate officials and have little contact with working people. A Los Angeles Times survey found that 54% of newspaper editors said they generally took business' side in disputes with workers, while only 7% generally sided with employees--a contrast with polls that show most Americans generally side with workers. A fourth consideration is that working people usually do not have the time, money or training to compete with corporate media-relations operations. Union workers
Re: request for information
here's another set of replies for Mitchell. 1. Especially in introductory classes, how do you balance conveying information and helping students to think critically? A central purpose of intro classes is to teach skills, which lie between these things. Conveying information in the sense of simple facts - the Battle of Adowa was fought in 1898 - is one of the the least important things a college teacher can do. On the other hand critical thinking relies on the ability to think systematically - in coherent logical structures of concepts. You normally have to teach that first. It might also be noted that most students in 100-level courses, and even higher up, think of knowledge as unitary - there are right things and wrong things and we teach only the right things which all fit together nicely. This is not their fault - this is an idea of knowledge that's been used to establish pedagogical authority for their entire schooling up to that point. Working them toward a more critical position is not easy, and many turn resistant if you try it too abruptly. Critique, ideally, should emerge out of understanding. 2. How do you evaluate the development of your students as critical thinkers? Writing. In general I look for ability to grasp the internal logic of a position and develop critique from that. 3. How important is it to you that classes be structured democratically? This is a bit like asking a wage-laborer how important it is that firms be worker-owned. A fine idea, but generally out of the reach of individual initiative. (Of course you might reply that the real parallel is asking a *boss* this question, and teachers just like power. But note that even your own questions e.g. "how do you evaluate ..." assume hierarchy.) In any case, as a teacher I'm inserted in an authoritarian structure which is pretty firmly rooted in students' own minds. As another pen-l respondent noted, when you try to be more relaxed a lot of students stop working, which pushes you back into a more parental role. A thoroughgoing shift in student and institutional culture, as Evergreen has tried, may be able to change this. But otherwise it's a great example of how structure constrains. 4. How much freedom do you have to plan your own syllabus, or to alter your syllabus so as to better meet the needs of students? Large pedagogical freedom and quite substantial content freedom. In more traditional econ programs there is an expectation that certain material will be covered, e.g. if you're teaching intro micro you of course do neoclassical consumer and firm theory (if for no other reason than that your students will be hurt in upper-level courses if they've never seen this stuff). But even when I've taught at fairly traditional places other faculty have not really given a monkey's what I did in class - not so much out of tolerance, but because they know that 90% of what is taught in most classes is quickly forgotten. 5. What relationship do you see between academic education in economics and social justice movements? As it is now normally taught, the relation is surely antagonistic. Presumably it could be taught better. But any reasonably-educated person can learn new stuff as needed. My undergrad work was mainly in literature and philosophy and that served me better as an activist than any number of econ courses would have. Finally, remember that while on the one hand education in general is a social good and better educated people have, hopefully, skills that can contribute to movements, on the other hand higher education (no matter what the content) plays a very large role in reproducing class. You might want to get in touch with the Center for Popular Economics at UMass Amherst, which has presumably thought these questions through and which may have a sunnier take on some of them. Best, Colin (Colin Danby, U. Wash., Bothell)
[PEN-L:10467] Re: Re: Re: FWD: Re: Baker on IP
Jim Devine replied to my post on this thread. Jim's post was very useful in clarifying my thoughts. But we disagree. I wrote: > For pharmecueticals, the problem is taken care of by diffrentiating the >product, through patent protection. Jim Devine wrote: Product differentiation isn't enough. In the textbook "monopolistic competition" model, there is still a tendency toward zero "economic profits" due to entry (so that the actual profit rate moves to the average profit rate). As Baker notes, it's the government-guaranteed monopoly (patent protection) that gives the pharmaceutical companies the ability to appropriate profits. My point was different. I'm arguing that without product differentiation (or a "barrier to entry", which Jim addresses separately) -- there can't BE any profits. In other words, for an industry with large overhead costs, there can't be economic efficiency without some sort of "cooperation" (collusion) on production. It isn't a question, in my view, of "appropriating" profits. If there is textbook competition -- which I think is the "cutthroat competition" which even Alfred Marshall deplored -- and certainly all gentlemen deplore -- if there is that kind of competition (and without cooperation) then prices are driven below average costs and hence zero profits. (Even "normal profits" can't be earned.) Then, the story goes, firms will leave the industry. Of course then we are into Joan Robinson's "leets". In the airline industry, after deregulation, there was entry, excess capacity, and numerous bankruptcies. (Pan Am, Eastern, People's, Continental, Braniff, TWA, etc. etc. some went bankrupt twice.) But capacity did NOT leave the industry. The bankrupt airlines kept flying, and adding to the problem by cutting prices to get some contribution to overhead costs. After a while, traffic grew, planes were retired, and now there is a shortage of capacity. PLUS cooperation on pricing through a central computer. So prices and profits soar. But during the excess capacity we didn't have "economic efficiency" -- too much capacity compared to what consumers want isn't "efficient" nor in the shortage phase do we have economic efficiency. The point is that we never have economic efficiency in an industry with the airlines cost structure. Nor in pharmecueticals, nor in farming, nor in vitamins, nor in railroads, nor in ADM's line of products, nor in anywhere. It is cost structure, not "barriers to entry" that is important. Barriers to entry is a defense in these kinds of industries, an attempt to cope with cost structure problems that are always present. I wrote: >There was an earlier thread about software -- where the MC of production >is trivial, but the price is hundreds of dollars. Here the >differentiation is through copyright. Jim replied I'd say that copyright is the basis of not only differentiation but also of a barrier to entry (and thus monopoly power). What I am saying is that without monopoly power, (or cooperation/collusion on capacity and prices) industries with these cost structures can't exist. >... Another out for these kinds of industries is price discrimination. >If you can discriminate among customers, collect more than Average Cost >from some, you can charge less than AC from others. An obvious example >is the airline industry, which severly discriminates against business >customers and then fills the seats with leisure travelers. And then, in >a third tier, sells distressed inventory on the internet. The need for >discrimination, forced by overhead costs, became clear with the >railroads, with huge overhead costs. Price discrimination there brought >on regulation, actually embraced by the railroads themselve, as Gabriel >Kolko persuasively argues. The railroads were not able to control >themselves, to self-enforce price-fixing deals, and so turned to >regulation to keep each other from "cutthroat competition." Jim wrote: Price discrimination doesn't guarantee "economic profits." Rather, it's a result of having price-setting power (among other things). It isn't just "Price setting power." I argue that price discrimination is necessary for existence. The airlines MUST gouge the business customers -- i. e. charge above (way above) average cost to get the revenue to be profitable. And then, they pick up additional revenue above marginal cost by pricing leisure fares for whatever they will bring. And then, they sell "distressed merchandise" on the internet. This isn't price setting power, per se, but pricing that is required if you have the cost structure of the airlines. Or universities!!! Why do universities discriminate so severely among their customers? They price for survival because they face large overhead costs. They gouge with very high tuition, then fill the seats with discounted prices. Universities call the discounted tickets "student aid" but it is just discounted seats. They are non-profits -- so where are the monoploy profits? They don't price
[PEN-L:10465] request on teaching
Penners, I had replied to Mitch's questions off-list. But since Michael thought the questions of general interest, I'm forwarding my responses to the list. Ellen Frank 1. Especially in introductory classes, how do you balance conveying information and helping students to think critically? Introductory classes, in my opinion, are not fundamentally about conveying information. Look at an introductory textbook - all theory, very little hard facts. The object of an introductory economics course is to indoctrinate, to teach a theory uncritically. It's fairly easy to subvert this intent (and teach students to think critically) simply by assigning readings that take issue with the textbook. I use the Dollars and Sense readers and other materials. 2. How do you evaluate the development of your students as critical thinkers? I ask for a lot of compare and contrast papers. I organize debates. I also have students do an investigative project, finding out all they can about a particular market or program and compare the actual to the textbook ideal. 3. How important is it to you that classes be structured democratically? I'm not sure what it means to structure a class democratically, at least in introductory classes. When I started teaching, I tried very hard not to be authoritarian, to seek students input and so on, but the nature of an introductory course is that I know alot more than the students and I have a much better sense of how they learn than they do. I do try not to lecture too much and I always stop talking immediately when a student raises his/her hand. I don't require students to raise their hands, actually, and sometimes, if I have a very motivated and talkative group of students, my classes turn into free-for-alls. But I reserve the right to pull rank and move on. 4. How much freedom do you have to plan your own syllabus, or to alter your syllabus so as to better meet the needs of students? Well, nobody's standing over my shoulder telling me how to teach and my colleagues are generally supportive of pedagogical experimentation. But I work within the context of broader institutional and social constraints. I need to be cognizant of discipline boundaries, to make sure my courses transfer to other institutions, to give grades that will be understood by graduate institutions and so on. 5. What relationship do you see between academic education in economics and social justice movements? I do feel there's a relationship. I teach economics in a very critical manner and students who take my courses are often motivated to become involved in social justice work. Also, education is important, even if I'm not reaching thousands of people. How many places are there in the US where people have frank on-going discussions about whether income distribution is just, or what justice even means in an economic context. While I understand that teaching is not a substitute for social justice efforts, it's not unimportant. I am often asked to teach classes organized by labor groups or other activist groups who tell me that their members need more education about economics. Best of luck with your project. Ellen Frank Emmanuel College Boston, MA
[PEN-L:10464] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: competition vs monopoly
Ah yes, engineers versus marketing departments, our Dilbert cartoon and comic strip here does a good job with that (with all due respect to Norman Solomon's critique of it as more PMC soma) Low earth orbit satellites are yet to be tested in the world of low cost fast high capacity - it all seems a little behind schedule already - and certainly they're not attracting the press they were two years ago. I agree, but once they do get implemented, the skys will be alive with the sound of Gates ( Julie Andrews et al ) and other corporations ( this may be especially since LEO, because of height and cost may be a more 'natural' radiospectrum monopoly). Bypass may be a more compelling issue for haves and have-nots. I'm not sure whether the flag of the win95 key will become the (trans)national symbol yet. Well, it's my vote for that role - and bigger than the twin arches, too. I'm betting on the red (van(Value-Added Network?))guard of PRC intellectual property pirates undermining that and filling all of those panes red, and do we trust the id # on our current chips, pentiumIII notwithstanding? Y2K may be a much better test, I haven't met a single person who reckons they have a clue how that one is gonna wash out - and then there's the real possibility it becomes a technical non-event and a whopping great sociological phenomenon (panic buying and panic selling etc). well, we know about those types of 'black' day capital crises, and I am amused by my less political acquintances beginning to hoard gold ( and food and water and... ), Oh gosh, that sounds like Waco! Still not sure it bites any more deeply into MS's flesh than anybody else's, though ... You're right, it may be so diversified that there is a kind of 'sustainability' and of course there are things to step in eg MCI-Worldcom (or is it Welt-Kom?) Ann
[PEN-L:10462] Re: request for information
I was dissapointed that nobody answered Mitchell until I realized how difficult his questions were. Mitchell Chanin wrote: 1. Especially in introductory classes, how do you balance conveying information and helping students to think critically? I am not sure how to answer this question since both go together. 2. How do you evaluate the development of your students as critical thinkers? 3. How important is it to you that classes be structured democratically? It is impossible to do. I tried when I started teaching, but unlike Evergreen, our students respond to democratic opening by sluffing off on the most democratic classes. 4. How much freedom do you have to plan your own syllabus, or to alter your syllabus so as to better meet the needs of students? I am pretty free to do what I want, just so I cover the basics. 5. What relationship do you see between academic education in economics and social justice movements? Critical thinking is important. Also, students need to be able to see through conventional economic arguments, while anticipating the consequences of policies that they favor. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:10466] Labor Day
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR September 3, 1982, Friday, Midwestern Edition SECTION: Opinion and Commentary; Pg. 23 LENGTH: 740 words HEADLINE: Labor Day BYLINE: By Thomas V. DiBacco; Thomas V. DiBacco is a historian at The American University, Washington, D.C. Labor Day, begun 100 years ago, is the nation's most unusual holiday in terms of its origin and passage through time. On the one hand, it was initiated by workers to break up the long interval between July 4 and Thanksgiving when there were no holidays. On the other hand, it was supported by union laborers as a day to show the strength and solidarity of their ranks through parades and similar demonstrations. Because the two objectives were divergent, the holiday would fall victim to some fine points. To amass large numbers of union workers was a difficult, if not unrealistic goal in America. Since colonial times labor was viewed as a temporary status in a society with enormous opportunities. To pursue unionism was admission that upward mobility was not possible. In such a social environment a Union Day would not fly, but Labor Day was too general, the monopoly of one group: the farmer labored, as did the merchant, physician, and clerk. And there would be far more of the latter then there would be blue-collar workers carrying union cards. For these reasons the big parade that labor leaders predicted for the first celebration in 1882 fell short of expectations. The initital national observance in 1895 was also uneventful, except as a day of leisure: ''The labor organizations in this city,'' read one newspaper account, ''with the exception of the Knights of Labor who are garment makers, refrained from parading yesterday, but observed the day by attending picnics, where they had music, dancing, and speaking. . . .'' There were other developments that worked to the disadvantage of organized labor's hopes. In the 1880s European unions moved toward adopting May 1 as the international labor celebration. But American leaders were divided over the matter, opting ultimately for the late summer break. And the attempt to identify with the international day would be discredited, first by the riot associated with the Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago in the wake of May Day, 1886, later by the perception of European movements as too radical. Then came the Pullman railroad strike and boycott in the spring of 1894 which Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, could not fully support. This division in organized labor's camp provided Congress with the opportunity to take full advantage of the situation. Legislation establishing a national Labor Day was rushed through both houses - with unanimous votes - and signed by President Cleveland during the Pullman crisis in June, with the immediate beneficiaries the large number of working people who preferred the obvious (a day off) to principle (unionism). The gains that organized labor would make had little to do with the activities of Labor Day. The AFL for a long time eschewed political action and demonstration in preference to the bargaining table. Its own method of organization along skilled lines worked against the goal of building an army of laborers, some of whom could perceive that skill was becoming an anachronism anyhow. Finally, organized labor had no Armageddon or Gettysburg to rally the troops, and the first Monday in September just didn't quite fit the bill, although Gompers tried to ennoble the day. ''It is regarded,'' he said in 1898, ''as the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs might be discussed, placed upon a higher plane of thought and feeling; that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it; meet at their parks, groves and grounds, and by appropriate speech, counsel with, and pledge to, each other that the coming year shall witness greater effort than the preceding in the grand struggle to make mankind free, true and noble.'' To be sure, later in the 20th century Labor Day would give unions some limelight from politicians in search of votes. However, after 100 years organized labor finds its ranks dwindling (from a peak of 25 percent of the civilian labor force to less than 20 percent percent) and its special days not so special. May Day in America after World War II became Loyalty Day - in opposition to communist regimes flexing their military muscle - and more recently is observed as Law Day. As for Labor Day, it has come to mean for most Americans the ending of summer and the beginning of fall. Copyright© 1999, LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:10459] Water
. the future of one of the earth's most vital resources is being determined by those who profit from its overuse and abuse. Blue Gold: The Global Water Crisis and the Commodification of the World's Water Supply INTRODUCTION: "The wars of the next century will be about water." Ismail Serageldin, vice-president of the World Bank We'd like to believe there's an infinite supply of water on the planet. But the assumption is tragically false. Available fresh water amounts to less than one-half of one percent of all the water on Earth. The rest is sea water, or is frozen in the polar ice. Fresh water is renewable only by rainfall, at the rate of 40-50,000 cubic kilometers per year. Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth. According to the United Nations, more than one billion people on earth already lack access to fresh water. If current trends persist, by 2025 the demand for fresh water is expected to by 56 percent more than is currently available. The push to commodify water comes at a time when the social, political and economic impacts of water scarcity are rapidly becoming a destabilizing force, with water-related conflicts springing up around the globe. For example, Maylasia, which supplies about half of Singapore's water, threatened to cut off that supply in 1997 after Singapore criticized its government policies. In Africa, relations between Botswana and Namibia have been severly strained by Namibian plans to construct a pipeline to divert water from the shared Okavango River to eastern Namibia. Much has been written about the potential water wars in the Middle East, where water resources are severly limited. The late King Hussein of Jordan once said the only thing he would go to war with Israel over was water because Israel controls Jordan's water supply. Meanwhile, the future of one of the earth's most vital resources is being determined by those who profit from its overuse and abuse. At the 1998 annual World Economic Development Congress, which follows the annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting, corporations and financial institutions met with government representatives from more than 84 countries to attend panels on such subjects as "Overcoming Obstacles to Water Investment" and " Navigating Transparency and Banking Regulation in Emerging Capital Markets." The agenda was clear: water should be traded like any other tradable good, with its use determined by market principles. At the same time, governments are signing away their control over domestic water supplies by participating in trade treaties such as North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). These agreements effectively give transnational corporations the unprecedented right to the water of signatory countries. Already, corporations have started to sue governments in order to gain access to domestic water sources. For example, Sun Belt, a California company, is suing the government of Canada under NAFTA because British Columbia (B.C.) banned water exports several years ago. The company claims that B.C.'s law violates several NAFTA-based investor rights and therefore is claiming $220 million in compensation for lost profits. With the protection of these international trade agreements, companies are setting their sights on the mass transport of bulk water by diversion and by super-tanker. Several companies are developing technology whereby large quantities of fresh water would be loaded into huge sealed bags and towed across the ocean for sale. The U.S. Global Water Corporation, a Canadian company, is one of those seeking to be a major player in the water trade. It has signed an agreement with Sitka, Alaska, to export 18 billion gallons per year of glacier water to China where it will be bottled in one of that country's "free trade" zones to take advantage of cheap labour. The The company brochure entices investors "to harvest the accelerating opportunity... as traditional sources of water around the world become progressively depleted and degraded." Selling water to the highest bidder will only exacerbate the worst impacts of the world water crisis. SOCIAL INEQUITY: * In India, some households spend a staggering 25 percent of their incomes on water. * Poor residents in Lima, Peru, pay private vendors as much as $3 per cubic meter for buckets of often-contaminated water while the more affluent pay 30 cents per cubic meter for treated municipal tap water. * In the maquiladora zones of Mexico, water is so scarce that babies and children drink Coca-Cola and Pepsi instead. DISEASE: * More than five million people, most of them children, die every year from illnesses caused by drinking poor quality water. Food Security: * China is facing the likelihood of severe grain shortages because of water depletion and the current shift of limited water resources from agriculture to industry and
[PEN-L:10458] Re: Re: competition vs monopoly
G'day Michael, For what it's worth, I agree with you (and thus just about everybody who's not in our parliaments) about competition. But you're closing quote-of-self has some implications, I think. Remember Castells putting down the SU's implosion to an inability to keep up in the 'information age'? By his reasoning (if memory serves), the SU managed to put off the inevitable precisely because of its large industrial base and the stability it afforded. But by the mid-eighties (a decade after the erstwhile military-industrial convergence technologies had been redirected to the 1st world civilian market-place), it had begun to creak most ominously. Today, the likes of Microsoft might be said to offer a buffer in this sense. The decisive question might be, can they survive stuff like the directions in which photonics seems to be taking us (liquid-state 'instant/mega-capacity' processing, if you like)? Have they the political economic power to stifle this one? Or control its diffusion? Or does it matter at all? Is the thing to let the temporary gales pass you by, and just make sure you corner the market on the stuff that actually give computers and networks their value: software and IP regimes? That way, the better others make the technology, the greater the cut of the content owners. Whilst others bend and crash before these destructive gales, you just sit there like Jabba the Hutt, growing more inertly fat all the while. On that account, the likes of IBM need to worry, but Microsoft certainly need not. They've got so much stability they'd be advised to play to their strengths and stay inert altogether. Just buy up ISPs and would-be competitors as they rear their pimpled little heads; give their software away to new users (like a smack dealer always gives away that first hit); and buy up every text and image that comes along. Let's face it - this is what they're doing already. in short: - A commodified net, - in concert with a Microsoft default setting on every computer, - a US-authored but globally binding IP regime, - and a State Department which seems to lack either (or both) the power or inclination to compromise this gargantuan monolith, constitutes: - a blue sky future for Microsoft (hence the Kudlow warcry: never mind those p/e's - borrow at 7% and buy 20% a year for life!), - a classic dependency configuration as far as the rest of the world is concerned, and - an accurate description of the world today. If any of this holds water, the thing to do is to look for likely inhibitors to this incipient leviathan (I doubt it'll be the domestic institutional setting, whose interests are contingent - and I don't think mainstream economics has anything to tell us about it - but the net might yet evince some technical shortcomings, or the rest of the world might yet have something to say about revising IP's currently catch-all nature - otherwise it's a matter of waiting for the implicit gross distortions to bite in the form of underconsumption and mebbe some desperate belligerence). Anyway, I guess I'm suggesting even an apparently stable (to the point of apparent omnipotence/omnipresence) monolith like this might constitute what some of us call a 'contradictory unity'. Yours Nostradamically, Rob. You'd written: We should also take note that this same sort of inertia that Keynes, Galbraith, and Schumpeter advocated can prove to be dangerous when maintained too long, as they themselves recognized. For example, after World War II, many large firms in the United States used a combination of market power and protectionism to permit them to maintain their outdated plant and equipment, while Europe and Japan were deploying more modern technologies. This strategy allowed them to enjoy a greater degree of stability, at least in the short run, but it eventually left these same firms vulnerable to a competitive shock from imports during the 1970s and 1980s.
[PEN-L:10457] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: normal profits, etc.
Michael Perelman wrote: The reason that inflation and depreciation has to do with the rate of profit is that the numerator has a capital stock associated with it. For example, if a computer is bought in one year, we cannot merely take the market price from last year as its contribution to the total capital stock. ___ Of course not. We take the price of the computer today to value the capital stock. What is the problem with that? Cheers, ajit sinha Ajit Sinha wrote: What inflation or deflation has got to do with calculating the generalized rate of profits? It is a measure for a given point in time, it has nothing to do with changes in prices. And if the calculation of the generalized rate of profits is "abstract", then what economic calculation could be characterized as "concrete"? --- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
