Re: Neuroeconomics
At 2003-06-22 06:43 -0400, Michael Hoover wrote: an article was published in the New York Times a couple of days ago about the new specialty of neuroeconomics. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/science/17NEUR.html It is described as a revolution in economics, and should go a long way towards addressing the reservations which have been expressed in many quarters about the scientific underpinnings of economics and the validity of its prevailing theories and methodologies. This would seem to be relevant to political science because these methodologie appear to have invaded the discipline. I think it is true that empirical, almost naive, experimental developments, are undermining the previous scientific paradigm. This journalistic article shows some of the mounting evidence. Whether the term neuro-economics will catch on as more than a fashion is hard to say. But the field sounds as if it will attract growing research funding. What I suggest is happening is that a number of developments are undermining the assumption that economic behaviour can be modelled with a simple model that all economic actors are rational people. This is undermining the ideological assumption imposed by capitalism by way of a model of eternal human nature, that everyone acts like an atomised individual, who is the counterpart of the atomised commodity, which is the basis of the capitalist mode of production. In fact however just as the commodity contains a fetishistic power - the social context in which it was produced and in which it will contribute, so do humans all act within a social context, partly unconsciously, partly consciously. Part of the new empirical studies are based on new techniques of brain imaging, which are enormously crude, but essentially demonstrate that all parts of the brain are interconnected, which makes sense since in external reality everything is connected with everything else. The average number of neurones that feed excitatory or inhibitory impulses into another neurone is of the order of 1000. With roughly 10^11 neurones in the human brain, the number of synapses is of the order of 10^14. It is quite impossible to assume that cognitive processes have evolved in the human brain separately from emotional processes. These brain imaging studies give conformation of what market researchers know about subjective emotional factors in economic activity. Brain imaging studies have been used now to correlate with models of increasingly sophisticated games. These games have gone beyond the prisoner's dilemma. The game reported in this article is particularly interesting because it can only be explained by arguing that human beings in their economic activity are motivated by non-selfish collective responses as well as self interested ones. While the article talks knowledgeably about individual neuro-transmitters, and neurological structures, dopamine is only one of one thousand neuro-transmitters in the human brain. All these neurones and neurotransmitters of course feed back on each other and modulate each other. Any simply rectilinear model of psychological causation is likely to be facile nonsense. The brain, like the mind, like economics, like society, is a complex self-organising dynamical system. Marx Although Marx of course did not have neuro-imaging techniques or computerised modelling, I suggest this incipient revolution is by no means incompatible with the assumptions in his critique of capitalist political economy. Note, briefly, that in the comments on the architect and the bee, (Chapter 7 para 2 Capital Vol I) he insists on the role of imagination in commodity production. And while he does not spell it out at that point, the worker not only has to create the use object for exchange but must also imagine the likely market for the use value that is being created. Further, some of Marx's remarks are compatible with aspects of emerging evolutionary psychology, (although not the simplistic version which essentially tries to argue that the evils of capitalist society are determined for ever in our genes). Marx insists that man is a social animal: man is, if not as Aristotle contends, a political, at all events, a social animal (Chapter 13 para 8 Capital 1). The footnote at this point observes, Strictly, Aristotle's definition is that man is by nature a town-citizen. This is quite as characteristic of ancient classical society as Franklin's definition of man, as a tool-making animal, is characteristic of Yankeedom. In a footnote at the beginning of Chapter 24 Section 5, Marx denounces Bentham as an arch-Philistine, and a purely English phenomenon (just to be impartial). He writes here about human nature: To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of human utility. [Bentham's reductionist simplification]. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must
US: Outsourcing the occupation of Iraq
Turkey offers 1,200-1,800 soldiers to assist US in Iraq The United States Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz declared that Turkey offered relief aid and other assistance in the rebuild of Iraq, as well as 1,200 to 1,800 troops. According to a news article published in influential American newspaper the New York Times, between 20,000 and 30,000 allied troops from more than a dozen nations will begin arriving in Iraq in mid-August to replace some of the American forces leading the military occupation there. The international forces -- from countries including Italy, Spain, Ukraine and Honduras -- would join divisions led by Britain, Poland and perhaps another country, possibly India, and assume responsibilities for parts of central and southern Iraq. The News York Times also reported that Pentagon officials are negotiating with several other countries, including some that did not support the war. Defense officials have set aside their anger at Turkey for refusing to allow American forces to enter northern Iraq through Turkish territory during the war, to discuss Ankara's offers of reconstruction support. According to the newspaper, the U.S. administration officials met recently with the Turkish Foreign Ministry's second-ranking official Ambassador Ugur Ziyal, who offered relief aid and other assistance, as well as 1,200 to 1,800 troops. Turkey is eager now to assist us in the reconstruction of Iraq, Mr. Wolfowitz said. That's just one example of a country that has begun to move in our direction. Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter W. Rodman recently visited New Delhi to discuss troop commitments with Indian officials. A cabinet committee has yet to decide how to proceed, and the Indian government has said it will consult other political parties before deciding. How many American troops will remain in Iraq depends largely on the security situation there and how many other nations ultimately send forces, officials said. There are now about 146,000 American troops in Iraq, just 5,000 fewer than at the peak of the war. About 12,000 troops from Britain and seven other countries are also on the ground. Ankara - Turkish Daily News Article at: http://www.turkishdailynews.com/old_editions/06_21_03/for.htm#f10
Re: Query from a Venezuelan (reply to Chris B.)
From:Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] Coincidentally I was doing a Google search and came across this contribution to LBO-talk in October 2001 by Greg Schofield, which seems to put the issue well. [Unfortunately his email address no longer seems to be working. If anyone can forward me his current address, I would be grateful.] Hello Chris, Even though Greg and I live in the same city, we had some serious disagreements during his time at LBO-talk and we would certainly have disagreed on this issue. My point was not to lionise free trade. The Venezuelan situation raises many questions in my mind. I mean, for example, protectionism, like land reform, is very far removed from a genuinely socialist/communist society, assuming that _is_ what Chavez and the Bolivarians want to achieve. To me, the reference to the early 19th C. USA is not enouraging, because even at best, it seems to assume that protectionist strategies can (1) be detached from the real, historical class relations in which they occurred and (2) used to achieve a totally different kind of society. If, in the short to medium term, the Bolivarians _do_ intend predominantly state and/or worker owned enterprises, the development which protectionism is supposed to nurture will still have a socially destructive aspect/element, for which the Bolivarians will be blamed, even if they are no longer in power, and even if they take steps to ameliorate the social fallout. In general, I disagree with what I call the quantity theory of socialism, which to me was discredited by the Oil Shock, the stagflation which followed and the neoliberal (counter)revolution. I mean, consider that in the early 1970s more than 50% of the workforce in some OECD states was in the public sector! Some people thought it would creep onward and upward but they were wrong. Of course things _can_ turn around quickly, but that level of state ownership is at present unthinkable in any developed state. And as Marx predicted, once industrialisation (e.g the establishment of functioning ISI) is achieved, as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, protectionism has served it's purpose, can be dispensed with and the Venezuelans, English, Australians or Filipinos are no closer to a society in which the free development of the individual is the condition for the free development of all. regards, Grant.
What we don't know about 9-11
is nicely summarized at http://xymphora.blogspot.com/ under the June 21 date. (Didn't the space shuttle diasaster get a serious investigation begin in within 2 hours!?) Paul *** Confronting 9-11, Ideologies of Race, and Eminent Economists, Vol. 20 RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, Paul Zarembka, editor, Elsevier Science http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
Re: Query from a Venezuelan (reply to Chris B.)
Grant Lee: My point was not to lionise free trade. The Venezuelan situation raises many questions in my mind. I mean, for example, protectionism, like land reform, is very far removed from a genuinely socialist/communist society, assuming that _is_ what Chavez and the Bolivarians want to achieve. To me, the reference to the early 19th C. USA is not enouraging, because even at best, it seems to assume that protectionist strategies can (1) be detached from the real, historical class relations in which they occurred and (2) used to achieve a totally different kind of society. Okay, let's talk about real, historical class relations. Chavez's social base is the less privileged sectors of the working class, the peasantry and the urban informal sector, not the big bourgeoisie which spearheaded a general strike against him. Chavez has made it clear that he wants to see oil profits used for social development rather than the enrichment of upper management. The whole point of protectionism within the Venezuelan context is to retain as much of the profits as possible, to plow them back into the Venezuelan economy. If this is something that Marxists can't identify with, then they need some re-education. The Russian revolution of 1917 remains the purest expression of Marxist politics since 1848, no matter what its postmodernist/Marxist detractors in the academy have to say about it. As soon as the revolution triumph and was in a position to aid revolutionary struggles around the world, it made no distinction between purely socialist struggles and national liberation struggles. In Session 4 of the Baku conference, which took place in July 26, 1920 and was dramatized in Warren Beatty's Reds, Lenin remarks, First, what is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is the distinction between oppressed and oppressor NATIONS. He also refers to delegate Quelch of the British Socialist Party who said that the rank-and-file British worker would consider it treasonable to help the enslaved NATIONS in their uprisings against British rule. (emphasis added) If, in the short to medium term, the Bolivarians _do_ intend predominantly state and/or worker owned enterprises, the development which protectionism is supposed to nurture will still have a socially destructive aspect/element, for which the Bolivarians will be blamed, even if they are no longer in power, and even if they take steps to ameliorate the social fallout. If this is so, you'd think that the American ruling class would encourage Chavez, rather than using the NED and the CIA to overthrow him. In fact, the USA has used every means within its disposal since the Mexican revolution of Zapata and Pancho Villa (which actually predates the Russian revolution) to crush attempts to control the wealth of a nation for its own benefit--even when this is under the direction of a substantial fraction of the bourgeoisie as was the case in Peron's Argentina. In general, I disagree with what I call the quantity theory of socialism, which to me was discredited by the Oil Shock, the stagflation which followed and the neoliberal (counter)revolution. I mean, consider that in the early 1970s more than 50% of the workforce in some OECD states was in the public sector! Some people thought it would creep onward and upward but they were wrong. Of course things _can_ turn around quickly, but that level of state ownership is at present unthinkable in any developed state. I have no idea what the fact that 50 percent of a workforce being in the public sector has to do with socialism. Unless you address the underlying class relations, it is a meaningless statistic. You had state owned oil in Algeria, but this had nothing to do with socialism. And as Marx predicted, once industrialisation (e.g the establishment of functioning ISI) is achieved, as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, protectionism has served it's purpose, can be dispensed with and the Venezuelans, English, Australians or Filipinos are no closer to a society in which the free development of the individual is the condition for the free development of all. I can't understand why you would mix imperialist and imperialized countries together as you do above. Well, maybe I can... -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Marx on India
(LP: I will respond to this in a separate post.) Hallo Louis, we just recently came across your mail on Marxs writing on the British rule in India. On the background of ongoing discussions about a progressive imperialism we realized that quite a few former leftist scientists seemed to support their legitimisation of current allied wars with quotes from Marxs articles on India. With a due amount of distrust we set out to reconstruct Marxs texts. During our internet research we found your reply to Van Gosse. In discussing it we thought it interesting to get in touch with you, to argue about your view on Marxs writings. Because most statements on the NYDT articles seem to subdue them to the political opinions of the respective writers, we would like to strengthen a more material access. To our knowledge a critical reconstruction of the NYDT articles to date is not available. In the beginning we checked on the material, that Marx based his writings upon. In contrary to the statement, that Marx had only limited and outdated information on Indian society, a position you obviously agree with, we determined, that Marx had read most of the recently published books on India. His excerpts and some quotes in the articles show, that he had worked on: Campbell, George; Modern India: A Sketch of the System of Civil Government, 1852 Chapman, John; The Cotton and Commerce of India, considered in Relation to the Interests of Great Britain; with remarks on Railway Communication in the Bombay Presidency, 1851 Dickson, John; The Government of India under a Bureaucracy, 1853 Mill, James; The history of British India, 1826 Murray, Hugh; Wilson, James; Historical and descriptive Account of British India etc., Edinburgh, 1832 MacCulloch, J.R.; The Literature of Political Economy, 1845 - (Source: footnotes from MECW Volume 12, No.127) Klemm, Bernier, Saltykow, A.D.; letters sur lInde, 1848 These books are listed in the literature list of the German edition of MEW Volume 9. If the English MECW has not dropped scientific standards this list should be included there. In light of this, we tend to conclude, that the attempt to suggest Marx had no empirical basis has a political reason. A comparable misconception insists on a split up into a young, philosophical, unscientific Marx on one side and an older, materialistic, scientifically matured one on the other. To our knowledge there is no evidence to support such a separation. In the history of reception of Marxs writings it appears to be a means to discredit or ignore the political implications of his early writings and to insist on the necessity to add a lacking political sphere to his later works. To describe Marxs view on British colonialism as enthusiasm is contradicted by his articles. You even quoted some of the passages yourself. If Marx was enthusiastic about anything, than it was changing conditions of the opportunity for something new. In you mail you state Marxs understanding was a need for capitalist transformation of all precapitalist social formations. That suggests a general view on historic development, that is independent from specific local economic and social conditions. But Marx has always linked his evaluations to specific conditions. It wasnt for no reason, that he explicitly limited his statements on the need for capitalist transformation to western Europe. Eastern European or Asian economic and social formations are treated differently. I think we touched enough subjects to start a discussion. Attached you will find the version of your mail, that we worked with. Also you will find a German translation of your mail. Not all members of our group feel comfortable with original English versions due to a lack in language skills. Hope to hear from you Thomas Rathgeber Frankfurt am Main Germany Erwiderung auf Van Gosse zu Indien von Louis Proyect 15. Januar 2002 == Van Gosse: KollegInnen der H-RADHIST Liste, nehmt dies als Provokation. Was sagt uns Marx (und verschiedene Marxisten seitdem) ber die Mglichkeiten eines fortschrittlichen Imperialismus? Marxens Kommentare zu Indien und der Britischen Raj sind ziemlich bekannt, aber ich habe sie in der letzten Zeit nicht wiedergelesen. Aijaz Ahmad schrieb einen interessanten Artikel ber Marxens frhe Ansichten zu Indien (Marx on India: A Clarification), der in In Theory: Classes, Nations and Literatures erscheint. es war eine Erwiderung auf Edward Said's Polemiken gegen Marx in Orientalism. Ahmad's Hauptziel ist es den Kontext darzustellen in dem Marxens beilufige journalistische Stcke ber Indien erscheinen. Bemerkenswerter weise scheinen diese frhen Marxtexte eine anziehende Wirkung auf nach rechts driftende sozialistische Intellektuelle wie Van Gosse zu haben, die sie als eine Art Untersttzung fr humanitre Intervention durch die westliche Zivilisation gegen den dreisten Barbaren sehen knnten. Hardt und Negri beziehen sich auch auf
Suggestion from Paul Zarembka
Hi PEN-L, Paul Zarembka visited the VoteToImpeach.org voting site, cast a ballot supporting impeachment, and is sending you this note asking you to participate by casting your vote in the campaign to impeach George W. Bush for having committed high crimes and misdemeanors. The war in Iraq, the administration's lies and deceptions to the people and Congress, and the administration's assault on cherished civil liberties and civil rights require that the people of the United States demand action. In recent months, a mass nationwide effort has been created to use the constitutional mechanism to hold the president and other high officials accountable when they violate the law. Please visit the site at http://www.VoteToImpeach.org, read the articles of impeachment drafted by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and cast your ballot for impeachment. Grassroots democracy requires the direct participation of the people. Invite one (or more) friend(s) to visit the site, as part of our Each One, Reach One drive to help grow exponentially the number of people who have been introduced to, or have joined, the impeachment movement. In the coming period, when we reach the million vote mark, the results will be publicized in full page newspaper ads and taken to the House Judiciary Committee. VoteToImpeach.org http://www.VoteToImpeach.org/ Here is your friend's personal message to you Your consideration of this initiative for impeachment is encouraged. Paul Zarembka
Re: market competition fails again
How about wheat, corn, soybeans, kilowatt-hours, cement, etc., etc., etc., etc.,etc., etc., etc., etc. How about vitamins, graphite electrodes, lysine, citric acid, gas turbines, large transformers? Pharmacueticals are a good example. Buying your drugs from Canada? Even the US Senate is thinking of allowing that. Gene Coyle Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: exactly. On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 06:03:27PM -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote: Well, in the information age all we have is low marginal costs and high fixed costs, is it not? How many commodities does that apply to? There's software, entertainment products, and...? Doug
Re: Marx on India
Thomas Rathgeber wrote: In contrary to the statement, that Marx had only limited and outdated information on Indian society, a position you obviously agree with, we determined, that Marx had read most of the recently published books on India. His excerpts and some quotes in the articles show, that he had worked on: Campbell, George; Modern India: A Sketch of the System of Civil Government, 1852 Chapman, John; The Cotton and Commerce of India, considered in Relation to the Interests of Great Britain; with remarks on Railway Communication in the Bombay Presidency, 1851 Dickson, John; The Government of India under a Bureaucracy, 1853 Mill, James; The history of British India, 1826 Murray, Hugh; Wilson, James; Historical and descriptive Account of British India etc., Edinburgh, 1832 MacCulloch, J.R.; The Literature of Political Economy, 1845 - (Source: footnotes from MECW Volume 12, No.127) I am not sure whether these citations invalidate my claim that Marx was lacking the kind of information that would have prevented him from writing such obviously one-sided formulations: We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory, and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the other part, in contradistinction, wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindostan. We must not forget that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man the sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalizing worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Kanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow. The British Rule in India, New-York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853 After all, the above-cited J.R. MacCulloch was described by Marx in the Grundrisse as a 'past master in pretentious cretinism', 'at once the vulgarizer of Ricardian economics and the most pitiful image of its dissolution'. As for James Mill, perhaps the less said the better. Well, maybe a few words are in order. Mill believed that India, China and Japan needed enlightenment and progress in the utilitarian sense. He states in The History of British India that even to Voltaire, a keen-eyed and sceptical judge, the Chinese, of almost all nations, are the objects of the loudest and most unqualified praise. The spread of European, and British in particular, rule would bring glorious results for the whole of Asia, described rather infelicitously as that vast proportion of the earth, which, even in its most favoured parts, has been in all ages condemned to semi-barbarism, and the miseries of despotic power. When the question of independence for India came up, Mill argued, whatever may be our sense of the difficulties into which we have brought ourselves, by the improvident assumption of such a dominion, we earnestly hope, for the sake of the natives, that it will not be found necessary to leave them to their own direction. Not to belabor the point, it seems that all that was wrong in Marx's Tribune articles on India was a function of reading nonsense like this. Years later, especially in an aside with the Russian Danielson, Marx dispensed with any notions of Great Britain's civilizing mission in India, and simply described it--accurately--as thievery. To describe Marxs view on British colonialism as enthusiasm is contradicted by his articles. You even quoted some of the passages yourself. If Marx was enthusiastic about anything, than it was changing conditions of the opportunity for something new. But that's the problem. His enthusiasm for railroads, telegraphs, etc. was a reflection of an inadequate understanding of how and why they would be used in a place like India or Argentina, for that matter. Here is what Frederic Clairmont wrote in The Rise and Fall of Economic Liberalism, The Other India Press, Goa, India, 1995). It tends to deflate the sort of expectations that were found in the Tribune articles: It is one of the banalities of liberal economic thought to consider private international foreign investments as a polarizing agent in the industrialization process of the recipient country; but the illusion that foreign investment in railways would, under all conditions, usher in a new period of industrialization was also shared by the founders of Marxism. In one of his letters to Engels, Marx maintained that the British conquest of India should be seen as part of a historically progressive force, and that the British occupant was the unconscious tool of history. England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the
Re: market competition fails again
There is another tweak to the idea. In some cases, modern information technology has reduced the marginal cost of some superficial forms of variety. So, for example, it magazines can print something personalized for you in their advertisements or automobile companies can vary the color scheme on new cars. On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 07:25:51AM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: exactly. On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 06:03:27PM -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote: Well, in the information age all we have is low marginal costs and high fixed costs, is it not? How many commodities does that apply to? There's software, entertainment products, and...? Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Ashcroft wants to reach out to the people
Title: Re: Ashcroft wants to reach out to the people Further, they reveal that angels have been declared an endagered species. Horrors! Not that many Bin Ladens can dance on the head of a pin. Dan Scanlan
Re: market competition fails again
Title: RE: [PEN-L] market competition fails again Is there empirical evidence that the problem of low marginal costs and high fixed costs is so important to the economy that it changes the over-all dynamics of the economy? BTW, I hope no-one is trying to reduce _all_ of the problems of the capitalist market to this single problem. There are lots of other reasons to expect competitive markets to fail, e.g., externalities and adverse selection. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 9:07 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] market competition fails again There is another tweak to the idea. In some cases, modern information technology has reduced the marginal cost of some superficial forms of variety. So, for example, it magazines can print something personalized for you in their advertisements or automobile companies can vary the color scheme on new cars. On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 07:25:51AM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: exactly. On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 06:03:27PM -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote: Well, in the information age all we have is low marginal costs and high fixed costs, is it not? How many commodities does that apply to? There's software, entertainment products, and...? Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: market competition fails again
Jim, you are absolutely correct on both counts. I tried to make that point in my much-maligned book, The Natural Instability of Markets. On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 09:10:12AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: Is there empirical evidence that the problem of low marginal costs and high fixed costs is so important to the economy that it changes the over-all dynamics of the economy? BTW, I hope no-one is trying to reduce _all_ of the problems of the capitalist market to this single problem. There are lots of other reasons to expect competitive markets to fail, e.g., externalities and adverse selection. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 9:07 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] market competition fails again There is another tweak to the idea. In some cases, modern information technology has reduced the marginal cost of some superficial forms of variety. So, for example, it magazines can print something personalized for you in their advertisements or automobile companies can vary the color scheme on new cars. On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 07:25:51AM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: exactly. On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 06:03:27PM -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote: Well, in the information age all we have is low marginal costs and high fixed costs, is it not? How many commodities does that apply to? There's software, entertainment products, and...? Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
IMF: evict Argentians now
NY Times, June 23,2003 The Homes of Argentines Are at Risk in I.M.F. Talks By LARRY ROHTER BUENOS AIRES, June 22 After a decade as renters, Ariel and Norma Brofman were finally able to buy a small house here four years ago. But if the Argentine government yields to International Monetary Fund pressure to rescind emergency legislation meant to protect ordinary families like the Brofmans, the couple stand to lose their home and the $32,000 they have paid for it so far. Like other middle-class Argentines, the Brofmans, whose household includes their two daughters, aged 9 and 13, and their widowed mothers, were severely battered by the collapse of the economy here last year. In just a few months, Mr. Brofman lost his job as an electronics technician, exhausted his scant savings and fell behind on the monthly $555 mortgage payment on their two-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot house. We did not create this situation, said Mr. Brofman, 38, who now tries to make ends meet by repairing cellular telephones. The rules of the game were changed on us from one day to the next, and we were hoping the government would take steps to defend us until this country is back on its feet and we can begin paying again. So nearly a year ago, at the peak of the crisis, the Argentine Congress approved a bill that suspended mortgage foreclosures for 90 days on homes that were a family's sole and permanent residence. That law has since been renewed three times, but will expire in August unless Congress extends it again. It has, however, brought the Argentine government into conflict with the I.M.F., whose managing director, Horst Kohler, is scheduled to arrive here Monday for a two-day visit. Though Argentina now has a budget surplus and has taken numerous other steps urged by the I.M.F., government officials say that the fund is insisting that the freeze on foreclosures be lifted as a pre-condition for any comprehensive agreement. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/23/international/americas/23ARGE.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan
Title: FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan Chris Burford writes: The so-called free trade of the present period is no more than international capital giving itself the freedom to price fix unhindered, the freedom to exercise its plans without let, the freedom to use one group of workers to compete against another on a world scale. There is a historically progressive side to this and abstract opposition or support is niether here nor there. that's right. It's important to distinguish free trade in theory (the general lowering of tariffs and quotas on imports and the end of export subsidies) and what it usually means in practice (free movement of capital but usually not labor, the imposition of US-style intellectual property rights on the world, partial lowering of trade barriers (only by those countries with less political-economic clout), etc.) For those who want a critique of free trade in theory, see Ravi Batra's THE MYTH OF FREE TRADE. As usual with his popular writings, he's quite over the top, but he does present an alternative for a big country such as the US or a Latin American free trade zone: protection from international competition _plus_ encouraging competition within the protected area. Such a system would be (1) conservative of current social arrangements and (2) promoting the bourgeoisie inside the protected area, as Marx points out. Of course, in the establishment of a Latin American Free Trade Zone would be quite destructive of current social arrangements (even excluding the US from the mix). Jim
WMD's/FCC
NY Magazine, June 30, 2003 This Media Life WMD, FCC Tina Theres a reason big media has given Bush a pass on weapons of mass destruction, but it has to do with a Powell other than Colin. Plus: I love Tina Brown (really!). By Michael Wolff Im going to follow a thread linking the weapons of mass destruction to the FCCs move to relax the media-ownership rules, andtrust methrough to Tina Brown. First, the weapons: The Bush guys obviously played Saddam for a fool. He wanted to have those weapons. He was a broken man without them. The Bushies, by their wild accusations, conceded to him the very illusion of power that they knew he would happily and fiercely cling to and that they could then set out with appropriate fervor to protect us from and to take away from him. Saddam had a get-out-of-jail-free card: He just had to reveal to the world that he was bereft of resources, spent as a force, bankrupt as a ruler. But Rummy and Wolfowitz and Perle, and everybody else in the Bush administration who has been obsessing about Saddam for fifteen years, understood that it would be at least as difficult for him to admit to not having such power as to get tarred for having it. He needed to appear threatening. We needed him to appear threatening. We needed him to dissemble. He needed to dissemble. Everybody was party to the creation of an alternateand, likely, entirely falsereality. There was even a neat moral justification for letting Saddam hang himself: While the Bush people surely had an extensive understanding of the truly dismal nature of the Iraqi military resources, Saddams squirreliness allowed them to maintain an iota of less-than-absolute certainty (and then, of course, Wolfowitz and company couldnt help throwing in a little bogus intelligence). Indeed, North Korea, threatening to blow up the world in the middle of this, turned out to be helpful. Here was a down-on-its-luck regime apparently producing serious offensive weaponsso it could happen. (But since we werent running to the barricades on this, it probably meant that the weapons produced by a down-on-its-luck regime were of limited usefulness; or, on the other hand, it means that if we do really fear that a rogue regime has them, we tread carefully.) Even in the aftermath of the warwhere looking for the weapons has become something of a Monty Python routinethe Potemkin-village logic continues: If we cant find them, they still must be hereor they must have been herebecause Saddam could have avoided all this if he had just admitted he didnt have them (and while he did say he didnt have them, he didnt say it as convincingly as he would have said it if he really didnt have them). The logic of the war is the logic of the Jesuitical-style arguments popular on right-wing television and radio. Its been war by syllogism. We settledand continue to settlefor an abstract deduction over actual proof. Still, this deduction was not so ironclad, or brilliant, or irrefutable, that it could not beindeed, it has beendisassembled. And yet this low-rent logic remains, in the public mind, largely unassailable, because nobodycertainly not with any concerted attentionhas assailed it. Why not? It was a setup. A ruse. A cheat. Hello? How come the Bushies are getting away with it? Sheesh. Now the FCC: Every news organization from CNN to Fox to the networks to the big newspaper chains to the New York Times (although, heroically, not the Washington Post) was eagerly petitioning the Bush FCC (led by the secretary of States son, Michael Powell) for the freedom to substantially alter the economics of the news business. And as the war got under way, everybody knew the decision would come soon after the war ended. Its important to understand how much this FCC ruling means to these companies. News (especially old-fashioned headline news) is a sick business, if not a dying game. For newspaper companies, the goal is to get out of the newspaper business and into the television business (under the old rules, its a no-no to own newspapers and television stations in the same market). For networks with big news operations, the goal is to buy more stations, which is where the real cash flows from. The whole point here is to move away from news, to downgrade it, to amortize it, to minimize it. full: http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/media/columns/medialife/n_8880/ -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Complexity
Sabri wrote: That must be the Marsden effect. He has a tendency to put people to sleep. i've seen him give talks, and he's a fine, dynamic speaker. But this literary trend he is a part of is a dead end. I have one of his books with Hughes from 1976, A short course in fluid mechanics and it goes Lemma, Lemma, Theorem, Lemma, Theorem, Theorem, Theorem, so forth. it would be interesting to compare this, for example, to Arnold's work on fluid stability. The Soviets tend to be much more down to earth on this stuff. tho i will say the commutative diagrams look splendid in the Abraham/Marsden/Ratiu book. One wonders what kind of fluid mechanics is that. *!)#*!)@!!! I view him more of a painter than a mathematician. His papers and books always look very beautiful i love a nice looking piece of math, in fact i tend to get it only if i can see the artwork effort which went into creating it. but somehow a whole section of the topology/nonlinear-dynamics expository writing falls flat on this score. and it should be just the opposiite: a global, geometric way of viewing dynamics ought to feel right to the eyes almost effortlessly. Marsden's Elementary Classical Analysis is a fine book in the Proposition/Lemma/Proof category. but it doesnt pretend to be anything other than an undergrad math text in analysis. ultimately, it comes down to this, does the dry terse proposition/proof/lemma style of the manifolds/topology stuff add anything worthwhile to nonlinear dynamics work? for me, no. it adds instead to the hype aspect of the subject, because it adds interesting looking headlines without any insight attached. (and Marsden has QUITE A BIT of insight into dynamics). les
Re: property rights
Michael Perelman writes: very interesting, but this sort of crap did not interest the right wing when Blacks were moved out. Give me a break. It wasn't the right-wing that supported urban renewal in the post-WWII era. A staple of conservative book lists used to be The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal 1949-62, written in 1964 by Martin Anderson, who was later one of Reagan's domestic policy advisors. The Institute for Justice is a great organization -- I know several of the attorneys personally and have given serious consideration to working for/with them. They are the primary litigators on behalf of school choice. Interestingly, most of their clients are Black, whether in eminent domain cases, occupational licensing cases, etc., presumably because they are more symphathetic plaintiffs and it makes it harder for the defendants to demonize. One of their more famous cases involved a Black property owner who Atlantic City wanted to boot so Donald Trump could build a parking lot. David Shemano
Re: FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan
On Monday, June 23, 2003 at 10:34:16 (-0700) Devine, James writes: ... that's right. It's important to distinguish free trade in theory (the general lowering of tariffs and quotas on imports and the end of export subsidies) and what it usually means in practice (free movement of capital but usually not labor, the imposition of US-style intellectual property rights on the world, partial lowering of trade barriers (only by those countries with less political-economic clout), etc.) For those who want a critique of free trade in theory, see ... Not to be forgotten is what one might term the historical aspect of so-called free trade policies. They tend to be pushed by powerful nations who have a history of fiercely protecting domestic industry until it can prevail in international markets. England, Germany, and the U.S. are among many cases in point. An older critique is, of course, Friedrich List, *The National System of Political Economy*, funded in part (if I remember correctly) by Pennsylvania steel interests. Bill
Re: property rights
Title: RE: [PEN-L] property rights David is partly right. The liberals often used eminent domain for social engineering. For example, the Chavez Ravine communities (populated almost entirely by Mexican-Americans) in Los Angeles were torn down as part of the urban renewal project flowing out of the New Deal. The promise was that the displaced people would get (wonderful) public housing. But after the communities were torn down, the conservatives -- often citing free market theories -- blasted the project as socialism and its sponsors as Reds. This successfully blocked the housing projects. So, in the end, the Chavez Ravine was turned over to the Dodgers, who built a stadium there (while gaining the undying emnity of Brooklyn). No housing was ever built. The conservatives prefer social engineering involving free markets (in theory) and subsidizing business (in practice). Outfits such as the Institute for Justice emphasize the theory, while the conservatives in power use it as a cover for the practice. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: David S. Shemano [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 10:52 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] property rights Michael Perelman writes: very interesting, but this sort of crap did not interest the right wing when Blacks were moved out. Give me a break. It wasn't the right-wing that supported urban renewal in the post-WWII era. A staple of conservative book lists used to be The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal 1949-62, written in 1964 by Martin Anderson, who was later one of Reagan's domestic policy advisors. The Institute for Justice is a great organization -- I know several of the attorneys personally and have given serious consideration to working for/with them. They are the primary litigators on behalf of school choice. Interestingly, most of their clients are Black, whether in eminent domain cases, occupational licensing cases, etc., presumably because they are more symphathetic plaintiffs and it makes it harder for the defendants to demonize. One of their more famous cases involved a Black property owner who Atlantic City wanted to boot so Donald Trump could build a parking lot. David Shemano
Re: FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan
Chris Burford writes: The so-called free trade of the present period is no more than international capital giving itself the freedom to price fix unhindered, the freedom to exercise its plans without let, the freedom to use one group of workers to compete against another on a world scale. There is a historically progressive side to this and abstract opposition or support is niether here nor there. === I would simply add that it is not so much international capital giving itself freedom, but the enormous commodification of international law in order to trump law-policy making in a whole host of settings by nation-states. As Susan Sell points out in a forthcoming book that expands on an essay she wrote a couple of years ago, the TRIPS agreement was designed by the CEO's-legal staff of 12 US corps., handed to the US negotiators as they went to Punta del Este, given the free riding blessing of Japanese and European corps. and then rammed down the throats of the world's peoples. It is this kind of behavior that calls for making methodological nationalism -as one of the main assumptions behind free trade arguments- a much more problematized concept than has hitherto been explored in political economy and international relations theory. Ian
Re: FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan
Title: RE: [PEN-L] FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan I wanted to add a point: back in the 19th century, Germany and the US were able to successfully use tariffs to promote national economic development. But part of this success was the relatively small technological gap between them and the market hegemon, England. With a little bit of help from tariffs, they were able to imitate England, catch up, and move ahead. But isn't the technological gap much larger nowadays? doesn't the whole intellectual property campaign aim to keep the tech gap as wide as possible, if not widen it? In addition, we should remember that Germany's tariff-based development was one (perhaps minor) source of the inter-national rivalry that set up the conditions for World War I. Jim I wrote: ... that's right. It's important to distinguish free trade in theory (the general lowering of tariffs and quotas on imports and the end of export subsidies) and what it usually means in practice (free movement of capital but usually not labor, the imposition of US-style intellectual property rights on the world, partial lowering of trade barriers (only by those countries with less political-economic clout), etc.) For those who want a critique of free trade in theory, see ... Bill: Not to be forgotten is what one might term the historical aspect of so-called free trade policies. They tend to be pushed by powerful nations who have a history of fiercely protecting domestic industry until it can prevail in international markets. England, Germany, and the U.S. are among many cases in point. An older critique is, of course, Friedrich List, *The National System of Political Economy*, funded in part (if I remember correctly) by Pennsylvania steel interests.
Re: IMF: evict Argentinians now
On evictions in Argentina. Larry Rothers Brofmans (and many thousands like them) will not be seriously menaced before the last turn of elections, this year, takes place. Same can be said of the jeopardized owners of millions of hectares of land who were so indebted that their situation does not get better even after the extraordinary revenues they are getting through a rise in the foreign currency exchange rates which brought the dollar from one peso to more or less 3 pesos (most Argentinean agricultural produce is sold overseas, quite interesting for a country where people suffer Kwashiorkor and other food-deprivation related ailments). Bankrupted or defaulting debtors with the Banco Nacin (state-owned, providing most if not all credit for agricultural production), in particular, number hundreds of thousands. That is why the IMF also claims that the Banco Nacin be privatized. If it falls into private hands, a wave of evictions will further decrease the numbers of agricultural holdings in Argentina, which dwindled from some 430,000 to 320,000 in 14 years, particularly between 1991 and 2001. Once the elections are over, Kirchner will have free hand to strike the deal that the imperialists are dreaming of. Will he? Wont he? This is exactly what haunts the Brofmans and their similars. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: IMF: evict Argentinians now
Louis Proyect wrote: On evictions in Argentina. This was from Nestor Gorojovsky, btw. As was probably obvious. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Saving the advertising industry in a fractured media-verse? Biz 2.0
More hyperbolic shazbot from Business 2.0. The ad itself is interesting as actual art -- kind of the old game Mousetrap meets the Art Gallery of Ontario -- funded by an auto manufacturer. (www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,50151,00.html) As actual advertising, it is another familiar novelty. It's repeating the same process of novelty that has existed from day one involving the Internet as a medium. It's no different than 1995's thrills at watching a web cam broadcast of a fish tank or coffee machine in some university comp sci department somewhere. (People actually viewed those things back then.) Sure, you have fun showing it to your friends when it is new and there are not so many of them. (This is the point in the cycle of consumption that advertising people get excited.) But, gain, once there are more, the share of that interest that the provider of these things gains in response shrinks -- until the over-abundance them these things results in the viewer/consumer eventually finding it annoying and resorting to evasion of ad intrusion. The only viable form of advertising in a true multiplex of media is sponsorship. Own the event -- like, oh, say, a school department. (For instance, vote for Ian Murray as the Boeing Professor of Public-Private Partnerships in Local Economics. Give him a $150,000 annual expense account and string of Mini Coopers for his children and relatives. Something like that. Then you can't separate the ad/branding from the product/content.) Ken. -- Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. -- George Santayana --- cut here --- Downloading the Future of TV Advertising By John Battelle Business 2.0 July 2003 Issue Through the simple act of releasing a remarkable television commercial onto the Web, the U.K. wing of automobile giant Honda (HMC) has unleashed something of a typhoon in the advertising business. Though it has yet to fully play out, Honda's ad proves the value of content and could stand as a turning point in the history of the television spot -- proof that interactivity won't kill television advertising, as many are now predicting, but may instead be instrumental in saving it. In April 2003, Honda U.K. debuted an extraordinary two-minute television advertisement called Cog. Back in April, Honda U.K. debuted an extraordinary two-minute television advertisement called Cog. Aired only in the United Kingdom, the film -- and that really is the best term for it -- is a Rube Goldbergian ballet, a synchronized dance of 86 distinct parts from a Honda Accord that roll, pirouette, and fly along the floor in a mesmerizing production of meticulously intended consequence. The spot begins with a sequence of three cogs rolling along a plank; one falls to the floor, and a cam shaft rolls, setting an exhaust tube slowly spinning, which knocks three precisely placed grommets down the slope of a hood, and so on. (Download the ad for yourself at Honda UK.) To watch this film is to want to watch it again, which is what I did, repeatedly, after a friend e-mailed me the link. Not only was the work beautiful, but it was advertising -- it functioned in ways that television ads simply weren't intended to function. Cog made me think well of Honda, so the branding was effective. But more interesting was the way I came across it -- through word of mouth -- and the expectations I brought as I downloaded it: I was taking the action to view the message; it was my intent that drove the transaction. This ad was content I wanted, not a sales message I wished to ignore. The experience was peculiar -- this isn't how advertising models for television are supposed to work. But work it has. Since the film made its debut on British television in April, Honda U.K. has been besieged by repeat viewers. As was its custom, Honda had already put the ad on its site; it was instantly blogged and Slashdotted. Every major paper in the United Kingdom wrote it up, noting its painstakingly analog production (filming required more than 600 takes) and unusual length. Traffic to the Honda site quadrupled; in the first few weeks, nearly 1 million people downloaded the film. By mid-May, the number was twice that -- and millions more, no doubt, have seen the film as an e-mail attachment. The Honda marketing folks are clearly tickled by the response. We think this campaign has managed to reposition Honda more toward the quality and sophistication of the European makers, says Nigel Bobs, a marketing executive at Honda U.K. We certainly had no idea it would take off like this. Cog reminds us of the power of great content, and it may well shift the tired debate regarding what many marketers deride as vanity ads, which capture awards rather than results. It proves that great content can be combined with intent-based marketing like direct mail or paid search. Imagine a film like Cog as the payoff to clicking a paid link for Honda or buy car on Google. Or as a
Auto-insurance monopoly and interest-free premium advances
Car insurance signs clear: bumpy road ahead Complex reasons for rising rates THOMAS WALKOM Toronto Star June 21 2003 Ontario's auto insurance system doesn't work. After three governments and almost 15 years of tinkering, that's the sad reality. The obvious problems are well known. Premiums are shooting up and companies are getting stickier about renewing policies. The average Ontario driver pays about 20 per cent more in auto premiums than he did last year. But the more troubling figure is the growing number of drivers refused policies by the province's 164 car insurers. These people and there are roughly 80,000 of them now have been forced into the so-called Facility Association, an insurer of last resort that is owned by the private firms and which charges considerably higher rates. Last year, according to association head Dave Simpson, there were only about 20,000 drivers signed on with the Facility. For the government, this should be the canary in the coal mine, the early-warning signal that something is wrong. The Facility is supposed to insure only the very worst drivers in the province, those whose accident record is so bad that no sensible person would cover them. But when relatively good drivers find themselves forced to pay Facility-style rates, politicians know they are in for a pasting. Some of the problems in the Ontario system are endemic to insurance. In essence, insurance is a kind of legalized pyramid scheme: The insurer agrees to cover all his policyholders if they have car accidents, but he's betting that only a small number will be making claims at any one time. If the cost of servicing those claims rises unexpectedly, the insurer is forced to find the money to cover his bets either by raising premiums or refusing to write policies. Insurers say that's what is happening in Ontario. They complain that the benefits they are shelling out to accident victims particularly for so-called soft-tissue injuries such as whiplash are out of control. George Cooke, president of Dominion of Canada General Insurance Co., cites one comparison the industry likes to use: In 1992, insurers paid out $380 million for rehabilitation and assessment to car-accident victims; by 2002, that number had climbed to $1.5 billion. The other endemic problem involves the stock and bond markets. Insurers don't simply stick their customers' premiums under the mattress. They invest them and either keep the profits or use them to cover some of their claims costs. The amounts involved are not trivial. The Insurance Bureau of Canada, the private industry's trade association, reports that Canadian property and casualty firms (which write auto policies) made $2.2 billion from investments in 2002 money they used to cover the $1.4 billion they lost on underwriting. Insurers like to say that they are subsidizing customers' rates when they do this. In fact, a good case can be made that customers are subsidizing insurers by allowing them to use their premium money interest-free. In any case, when the bond and stock markets falter as they have over the past two years insurers try to compensate by raising the rates they charge customers. In 2002, according to the Insurance Bureau, investment income to property and casualty firms dropped by almost 20 per cent. No wonder then that they responded by raising rates to car drivers by about the same percentage. But the other, more telling, problems with the Ontario system are more specific to this province. Ironically, one is the industry's very competitiveness. There are 164 firms selling auto policies in Ontario. In good times, they compete furiously to lower rates. In bad times, they compete furiously to raise them. The result is a rate instability that many drivers find maddening. Recent history illustrates this. In 1996, Ontario's economy was rebounding from recession. Stock markets were up, which meant insurers were flush with cash. At the same time, the newly elected government of then-premier Mike Harris had just passed a new law that reduced benefits to car accident victims. Insurers scrambled to get customers. The key for many was to gain access to that interest-free premium money that they could then invest profitably in financial markets. And so, with costs down and potential revenues up, they cut premiums. According to Ontario's finance ministry, average premium costs in Ontario fell steadily, from $1,019 in 1996 to $918 in 2000. After that, they started to climb again until, by 2002, according to the government's Financial Services Commission of Ontario, rates were back at 1996 levels. Or, to put it another way, over the last seven years, auto insurance premium increases have averaged less than 3 per cent annually. If all drivers had experienced this, they might be more understanding. But averages do not take into account individual reality. Over seven years, people's circumstances change; they move (which may affect their rates) or buy
Re: FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan
At 2003-06-23 11:05 -0700, Jim Devine wrote: I wanted to add a point: back in the 19th century, Germany and the US were able to successfully use tariffs to promote national economic development. But part of this success was the relatively small technological gap between them and the market hegemon, England. With a little bit of help from tariffs, they were able to imitate England, catch up, and move ahead. But isn't the technological gap much larger nowadays? doesn't the whole intellectual property campaign aim to keep the tech gap as wide as possible, if not widen it? I think this is an important point which affects how we analyse imperialism, let alone defeat it. I do not know how you measure this gap, but roughly speaking the difference in wage rates for manual labour between rich and poor countries is now of the order of 30 times. Yes previous civilisations and cultures accumulated great wealth in the privileged classes, but such a difference in the price of labour power, is unprecedented in human history. My personal view is that the difference in the technological gap, is so great that the relative surplus value that derives from this has become a major source of unequal exchange in the world. It has replaced the coupon clipping which was the dominant mode of imperialist superprofits at the time Lenin wrote. I have no doubt that the imperialist and hegemonic forces intend to widen the gap, as you suggest, while talking disingenuously about spreading the benefits of free trade to people who have little to sell but their labour power and their natural resources. Chris Burford London
EU v NA -- Hegel and frontiers
As to the recent multilateralist tensions... Is there some deeply entrenched reason that North America and Europe (whether the UK ever decides to be in that or not) have different reactions to world events -- including socialist ideas? Maybe a burn out factor, to use a colloquial term? For instance -- in some recent research, BMW clearly stands ahead of NA car companies in trying to find a viable hydrogen car. The explanations of this from the auto makers themselves is humorous PR spin. One non-corporate source put it that Germany (and Europe) has given its auto-industry a helping hand in that it sets up things like take back systems. BMW will have to dispose of all those dead cars. So BMW is given incentive to reduce the cost of that. Hence, BMW (in this limited sense) has more money in RD and may have a much stronger position in the market for cars in a decade (it says a few thousand hydrogen cars will be in production in 6-7 years). It reminded me of something I'd read long time ago... Hegel's dismissing of North America as a serious source of social development until it ran out of frontiers -- which can mean many things, including the crass ability to let Ford dump dead cars in a badlands ditch. (Hegel used his more typical formulations, talking about the USA being spiritually feeble and outside world history -- and the French Revolution only happened because France didn't have a wild west to drain off discontent and mismanagement. Had Germany been a frontier, the pissed off French elements would have crossed the Rhine and built log cabins and the pressure would subside. But since Europe has fewer resources and land to use, it has had to address human political problems much more immediately. I am clearly paraphrasing here.) The basic idea -- denuded of Hegelian flourishes -- always seemed a better explanation for why NA has had less viable socialist-ic parties. I have heard self-proclaimed American Maoists dismiss the entire western working class as decadent -- in other words, their behavior is simply the result of over-consumption. I've also heard some blame mass media. I've heard blame labor bosses for collusion. (There are lots of these theories, and they are usually spouted in an angry-frustrated manner; however, when stripped of outrage, each has a degree of truth, I suppose.) I found that Hegel observation interesting... and wrote it down in my books of quotes and, upon researching BMW, thought of it again... Ken. -- A pallid outline for the real worlds richness. -- William James On over-intellectualism
Re: Complexity
Les: i love a nice looking piece of math, in fact i tend to get it only if i can see the artwork effort which went into creating it. Between you and I, me too. Not only that, I pay great attention to make my mathematics writing look beautiful. Unlike most people believe, mathematics is not about numbers at all. It is about patterns and structures. I heard him speak a few times as well, once on dynamic stability, and he made the topic so easy to understand that I couldn't believe that he is the same person who wrote those papers. I am familiar with his early work, until the late 1980s, in mechanics and don't know what he did after that, but the area in which he was working prior to 1990s died. Not that there is nothing left to do in there but that what is left is very difficult for anyone to attack, and more importantly, doesn't sell any more. I like Marsden though. A very smart guy. Best, Sabri
Re: property rights
David, I don't know what sort of break you want. I doubt that anyone here supported the old Urban Renewal programs. I always heard them referred to as Negro Removal. If you mean that they were Great Society programs they were, but I think that all of us viewed them [those programs] with contempt. On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 10:52:14AM -0700, David S. Shemano wrote: Michael Perelman writes: very interesting, but this sort of crap did not interest the right wing when Blacks were moved out. Give me a break. It wasn't the right-wing that supported urban renewal in the post-WWII era. A staple of conservative book lists used to be The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal 1949-62, written in 1964 by Martin Anderson, who was later one of Reagan's domestic policy advisors. The Institute for Justice is a great organization -- I know several of the attorneys personally and have given serious consideration to working for/with them. They are the primary litigators on behalf of school choice. Interestingly, most of their clients are Black, whether in eminent domain cases, occupational licensing cases, etc., presumably because they are more symphathetic plaintiffs and it makes it harder for the defendants to demonize. One of their more famous cases involved a Black property owner who Atlantic City wanted to boot so Donald Trump could build a parking lot. David Shemano -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: property rights
Michael Perelman writes: David, I don't know what sort of break you want. I doubt that anyone here supported the old Urban Renewal programs. I always heard them referred to as Negro Removal. If you mean that they were Great Society programs they were, but I think that all of us viewed them [those programs] with contempt. To paraphrase, you stated that the right wing did not care about the use of eminent domain to replace homes with commercial development when it was the homes of Blacks that were being taken, as opposed to now, when it is apparently the homes of Whites that are being taken. I am simply pointing out that there is no evidence that the opinion of the right wing, taken as a whole, is/was racially motivated, and the right has been consistent on the policy for over 40 years. David Shemano
FW: From New Zealand to Iraq; a reflection on Bremer's theory
Title: FW: From New Zealand to Iraq; a reflection on Bremer's theory [I wonder: what happened to the balance of political power in NZ that pushed and allowed Rogernomics? -- Jim] From: Jurriaan Bendien Bremer was quoted as saying: A fundamental component of this process will be to force state-owned enterprises to face hard budget constraints by reducing subsidies and special deals, he said. Iraq will no doubt find that opening its borders to trade and investment will increase competitive pressure on its domestic firms and thereby raise productivity. I had to think, hell, this sounds just like Finance Minister Roger Douglas used to talk in New Zealand in the second half of the 1980s. Remember what happened ? Well, the Labour government went on a spree of privatisations, government restructuring and deregulation that was the envy of the neoliberals in the Western world for a while. In fact it was a bit like Chile without a military coup. Hosannahs were sung about the daring policies of the NZ government, and NZ was supposed to be the model for how to reconstruct an economy. For a while anyway, later OECD economists retreated from their earlier enthusiasm and said things had happened a bit too fast, a bit too radically - they were worried about social coherence and social capital and suchlike. Actually, proportionally, approximately as many New Zealand residents went overseas, as left East Germany after the falling of the Berlin wall. I do not have the figures handy here, but there's got to be something like 300,000 kiwis in Australia by now. I just came across an old paper written by a now deceased comrade of mine, the trade unionist and socialist Geoff Pearce, in 1996 called Rodgering the economy: the downside of the New Zealand model, which was a critique of consultant capitalism. Consultancy was a really lucrative business in New Zealand in the later 1980s, because the government didn't actually have the in-house expertise to sell off public assets etc. For example, they would want to sell off half a million hectares of state forest, but nobody could say what the forest was worth. That is what you had consultants for. To cut a long story short, Pearce examines what happened to the New Zealand economy. Well, in 1992/1993, economic growth shot up to almost 8 percent, and the economists were saying hurrah and there was a lot of euforia. But by December 1995 it was about 2 percent, conventionally measured, and after that there was no real growth anymore; currently, there's just very weak economic growth. The OECD actually claimed that the average annual increase in productivity, using conventional measures, went from 0.9 percent in 1975/1984 to 0.5 percent in 1991/1996. The consultants claimed that liberalisation had produced over 200,000 new jobs, but, between 1991 and 1996 over 165,000 jobs were lost. Sure, there was a slight net gain in jobs, but it was more like people were forced to get other jobs than they had before, and the new jobs were often part-time and casual labour, mainly in the service sector. Have a look also at population growth. Restrictions on minimum and maximum working hours largely disappeared (the trade unions were smashed and dwindled to a small number of members). According to the Minister of Statistics, a person working for one hour or more per week would be considered to be employed. Following that sort of logic, I could make up some really good figures too. Nowadays New Zealand has one of the highest rates of involuntary parttime employment in the OECD (measured by the number of parttime workers who would prefer a fulltime job). The number of employed as a percentage of the population of working age has not yet recovered to the 1987 level as far as I know. Other stunning achievements: between 1991 (when the Employment Contracts Act was passed) and December 1995, wages increased 5.4 percent and consumer prices rose 12.1 percent. Thus, while there was something like an aggregate economic growth of about 19 percent or so over that period, real wages actually fell. An employers survey showed over two-fifths of them had reduced overtime rates (extra pay for extra hours worked) and another two-fifths had frozen them for five years (they would not increase with increases in base pay). Again, about two-fifths of employers had cut penal rates (about 44 percent froze them altogether) for anti-social working hours and a third said they used more parttime and casual workers. In 1996, the minimum wage was about 4 US dollars and for youths under 20 there is no minimum wage for paid work (it sounds sexy except if you have to work for Macdonalds, as a cleaner or stuff like that). A new practice developed where employers would hire staff as agents rather than employees, so they could pay them less than the minimum wage. There are now more millionaires in New Zealand probably than anywhere else in the world, measured proportionally, per head of population. How did that
Re: Saving the advertising industry in a fractured media-verse? Biz 2.0
Science World here in Vancouver runs a continuous loop of the 1987 Fischli and Weiss film The Way Things Go. The borrowings of the Honda ad from the film are obvious to anyone who has viewed both. What is also obvious -- and ominous -- are the non-borrowings: the autotalitarian elision of the gritty, angst-ridden edge that the original had. There is a definite sense of futility, debris and impending 'technological' lurching out of control to the original that perhaps, come to think of it, is more appropriate for a car ad than the sanitized white-painted walls and polished hardwood floors of the Honda re-make. Interesting that the Biz 2.0 article fails to mention the Fischli and Weiss film. It's not as if the resemblance is a secret. For another take on The Way Things Go, here's an excerpt from Arthur Danto: http://www.postmedia.net/999/fischweiss1.htm Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Sacramento ag expo
PEN-L: My rant on the Sacramento ag expo: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles6/Sandronsky_Ag-Expo.htm Seth Sandronsky _ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: Saving the advertising industry in a fractured media-verse? Biz 2.0
Tom Walker wrote: Science World here in Vancouver runs a continuous loop of the 1987 Fischli For another take on The Way Things Go, here's an excerpt from Arthur Danto: http://www.postmedia.net/999/fischweiss1.htm From Danto: the individual episodes seem to happen one after another smoothly and without interruption - the danger being that something will go wrong and break the chain. It is, for all the triviality of its individual episodes, an epic of some kind, vastly transcending the connotations of play while retaining the spirit of innocent mischief in which boys at play egg one another on to high and higher efforts which, taken collectively, seem to imply the pointless horror of unending war. Beginning with a Katzenjammer Kids mentality, Fischli and Weiss take their mischief to a distance so great that the resulting work becomes a postmodern classic, with a rich art-historical pedigree ranging from Jean Tinguely, the fabricator of self-destroying machines, to Joseph Beuys, who made art of soap, old newspapers, and whatever was, to echo Heidegger once again, at hand. This high and higher efforts that Danto speaks of, leading to chaos, must owe something to Laurel and Hardy as well. And of course Chaplin's Modern Times. In fact to much of the great slapstick, 1915-1940. Carrol
Monbiot on the WTO
I was wrong about trade Our aim should not be to abolish the World Trade Organisation, but to transform it George Monbiot Tuesday June 24, 2003 The Guardian A few years ago I would have raised at least two cheers. The US government, to judge by the aggressive noises now being made by its trade negotiators, seems determined to wreck one of the most intrusive and destructive of the instruments of global governance: the World Trade Organisation. A few years ago, I would have been wrong. The only thing worse than a world with the wrong international trade rules is a world with no trade rules at all. George Bush seems to be preparing to destroy the WTO at the next world trade talks in September not because its rules are unjust, but because they are not unjust enough. He is seeking to negotiate individually with weaker countries so that he can force even harsher terms of trade upon them. He wants to replace a multilateral trading system with an imperial one. And this puts the global justice movement in a difficult position. Our problem arises from the fact that, being a diverse movement, we have hesitated to describe precisely what we want. We have called for fair trade, but have failed, as a body, to specify how free that trade should be, and how it should be regulated. As a result, in the rich world at least, we have permitted the few who do possess a clearly formulated policy to speak on our behalf. Those people are the adherents of a doctrine called localisation. I once supported it myself. I now accept that I was wrong. Localisation insists that everything which can be produced locally should be produced locally. All nations should protect their economies by means of trade taxes and legal barriers. The purpose of the policy is to grant nations both economic and political autonomy, to protect cultural distinctiveness and to prevent the damage done to the environment by long-distance transport. Yet, when you examine the implications, you soon discover that it is as coercive, destructive and unjust as any of the schemes George Bush is cooking up. My conversion came on the day I heard a speaker demand a cessation of most forms of international trade and then, in answering a question from the audience, condemn the economic sanctions on Iraq. If we can accept that preventing trade with Iraq or, for that matter, imposing a trade embargo on Cuba, impoverishes and in many cases threatens the lives of the people of those nations, we must also accept that a global cessation of most kinds of trade would have the same effect, but on a greater scale. Trade, at present, is an improbable means of distributing wealth between nations. It is characterised by coercive relationships between corporations and workers, rich nations and poor. But it is the only possible means. The money the poor world needs has to come from somewhere, and if our movement rejects trade as the answer it is surely duty-bound to find another. The localisers don't rule out all international transactions. As Colin Hines, who wrote their manifesto and helped to draft the Green party's policy, accepts, Some long-distance trade will still occur for those sectors providing goods and services to other regions of the world that can't provide such items from within their own borders, eg certain minerals or cash crops. To earn foreign exchange from the rich world, in other words, the poor world must export raw materials. This, of course, is precisely the position from which the poor nations are seeking to escape. Raw materials will always be worth less than manufactured products. Their production also tends to reward only those who own the primary resource. As the workers are unskilled, wages remain low. Every worker is replaceable by any other, so they have no power in the marketplace. The poor world, under this system, remains trapped in both the extractive economy and - as a result - in its subordinate relationship to the rich world. Interestingly, Hines's prescription also damages precisely those interests he seeks to protect. To earn sufficient foreign exchange to import the goods they cannot produce themselves, the poor nations would need to export more, not less, of their natural wealth, thus increasing their contribution to climate change, soil erosion and the loss of biodiversity. His policy also wipes out small farmers, who would be displaced from their land by mechanised cash-cropping. A still greater contradiction is this: that economic localisation relies entirely upon enhanced political globalisation. Colin Hines's model invents a whole new series of global bodies to impose localisation on nation states, whether they like it or not. States would be forbidden, for example, to pass laws that diminish local control of industry and services. Hines, in other words, prohibits precisely the kind of political autonomy he claims to promote. But above all, this doctrine is entirely unnecessary. There is a far better means of protecting the
Re: Saving the advertising industry in a fractured media-verse? Biz 2.0
Or, digging deeper into the ruins... Homage to New York 1960 http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/archives/Kluver/00_Homage.html I asked Jean what I could do for him. Jean explained that he wanted to make a machine that destroyed itself and that he needed bicycle wheels... ...It was all over in 27 minutes. The audience applauded and descended on the wreckage for souvenirs. Jean called the event Homage to New York. Prophecy?
Re: Saving the advertising industry in a fractured media-verse? Biz 2.0
Carrol Cox wrote, This high and higher efforts that Danto speaks of, leading to chaos, must owe something to Laurel and Hardy as well. And of course Chaplin's Modern Times. In fact to much of the great slapstick, 1915-1940. Yes, also constructivism and dada. As Walter Benjamin wrote: Modernity; the time of hell. The punishments of hell are always the newest thing going in this domain. What is at issue is not that the same thing happens over and over (much less is it a question here of eternal return), but rather that the face of the world, the colossal head, precisely in what is newest never alters -- that this newest remains, in every respect, the same
Re: Saving the advertising industry in a fractured media-verse? Biz 2.0
- Original Message - From: Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] Carrol Cox wrote, This high and higher efforts that Danto speaks of, leading to chaos, must owe something to Laurel and Hardy as well. And of course Chaplin's Modern Times. In fact to much of the great slapstick, 1915-1940. Yes, also constructivism and dada. As Walter Benjamin wrote: Modernity; the time of hell. The punishments of hell are always the newest thing going in this domain. What is at issue is not that the same thing happens over and over (much less is it a question here of eternal return), but rather that the face of the world, the colossal head, precisely in what is newest never alters -- that this newest remains, in every respect, the same == Colossal Head -- by Los Lobos [a great cd which opens with wistful yearning about the revo, btw] (David Hidalgo/Louie Prez) What big eyes you have What big lips you have What a nice hat I love you (Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya.) What you said I can't hear you (Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya.) (What you said) (What you said) Do the colossal head (What you said) (What you said) Do the colossal head (Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya.) (Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya.) (Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya.) (Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya.)
Re: EU v NA -- Hegel and frontiers
Kenneth Campbell wrote: ...BMW clearly stands ahead of NA car companies in trying to find a viable hydrogen car Daimler-Chrysler is, about half, a NA company. And it is far ahead of BMW in developing a viable hydrogen car--Daimler-Chrysler busses, powered by Ballard (another NA company) fuel cells, are already on the road in several European and North American cities and many more are on order. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
Monbiot: So let us campaign not to scrap the World Trade Organisation, but to transform it into a Fair Trade Organisation, whose purpose is to restrain the rich while emancipating the poor. And let us ensure that when George Bush tries to sabotage the multilateral system in September, we know precisely which side we are on. I am not sure if I agree with this. It would have been nice of course if we can transform the World Trade Organization (WTO) into a Fair Trade Organization (FTO), but one question I have is this: Is the WTO transformable into an FTO? Who knows where the road may lead us, only a fool would say Who knows what's been lost along the way Look for the promised land in all of the dreams we share How will we know when we are there? How will we know? Best, Sabri
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
I would rather call for the strengthening of the International Labor Organization than the WTO. Any organization that emphasizes trade rather than people's lives is not likely to do much good. On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 08:27:06PM -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote: Monbiot: So let us campaign not to scrap the World Trade Organisation, but to transform it into a Fair Trade Organisation, whose purpose is to restrain the rich while emancipating the poor. And let us ensure that when George Bush tries to sabotage the multilateral system in September, we know precisely which side we are on. I am not sure if I agree with this. It would have been nice of course if we can transform the World Trade Organization (WTO) into a Fair Trade Organization (FTO), but one question I have is this: Is the WTO transformable into an FTO? Who knows where the road may lead us, only a fool would say Who knows what's been lost along the way Look for the promised land in all of the dreams we share How will we know when we are there? How will we know? Best, Sabri -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
- Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] I would rather call for the strengthening of the International Labor Organization than the WTO. Any organization that emphasizes trade rather than people's lives is not likely to do much good. = I would second that as long as we can encourage people to ask about what kinds of freedom trade facilitates in order to 'dig a bit deeper' into how we produce/create [un]freedoms. When lefties frame the trade issue in terms of poverty eradication, democracy and ecological sanity, we can win the argument every time. This is an issue that should play to our strengths. On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 08:27:06PM -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote: Monbiot: I am not sure if I agree with this. It would have been nice of course if we can transform the World Trade Organization (WTO) into a Fair Trade Organization (FTO), but one question I have is this: Is the WTO transformable into an FTO? == As I live in 'the North' I would rather hear from others even as I think that many in 'the South' are vehemently against the Bretton Woods paradigm, given my limited sampling of opinions. There's a new cosmo-eco-politics struggling to be born that's not like what happened between 1873-1918 and we need to understand and help create it Who knows where the road may lead us, only a fool would say Who knows what's been lost along the way Look for the promised land in all of the dreams we share How will we know when we are there? How will we know? Best, Sabri There is no promised land, there's evolution and us; an open-ended adventure. Ian
Re: Fw: Humphrey McQueen
Grant, asked what I like about the Humphrey McQueen book using Coca-Cola as the prototypical multinational corporation. I haven't gone into it much farther since I read Michael Lewis's Moneyball yesterday. Although it deals with the management of the Oakland Athletics, it actually contains some very interesting material about market inefficiencies -- how a very cash-poor team was able to buy relatively good players at cut rate prices. Back to McQueen. The 15 pages I have read so far seem a bit disorganized, a lot of jumping around, but with fabulous research into Coca-Cola, with many, many fascinating little extraneous nuggets of information. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan
Yes, the tech gap was much smaller between UK and Germany. Today it is much wider between OECD and the rest. But there are some areas where the gaps are much narrower, even if the economic base (market size, etc) are quite disparate. The IT industry would be a good example of this. But not aerospace, unless of course there is a specific tech/ind policy behind it. Israel, Brazil, India are cases in point. On this score I would recommend Jorge Larrain (a Chilean I think based in UK), where he cites Hinkelammert as offering this tech gap argument. cheers, anthony xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Devine, James wrote: I wanted to add a point: back in the 19th century, Germany and the US were able to successfully use tariffs to promote national economic development. But part of this success was the relatively small technological gap between them and the market hegemon, England. With a little bit of help from tariffs, they were able to imitate England, catch up, and move ahead. But isn't the technological gap much larger nowadays? doesn't the whole intellectual property campaign aim to keep the tech gap as wide as possible, if not widen it? In addition, we should remember that Germany's tariff-based development was one (perhaps minor) source of the inter-national rivalry that set up the conditions for World War I. Jim I wrote: ... that's right. It's important to distinguish free trade in theory (the general lowering of tariffs and quotas on imports and the end of export subsidies) and what it usually means in practice (free movement of capital but usually not labor, the imposition of US-style intellectual property rights on the world, partial lowering of trade barriers (only by those countries with less political-economic clout), etc.) For those who want a critique of free trade in theory, see ... Bill: Not to be forgotten is what one might term the historical aspect of so-called free trade policies. They tend to be pushed by powerful nations who have a history of fiercely protecting domestic industry until it can prevail in international markets. England, Germany, and the U.S. are among many cases in point. An older critique is, of course, Friedrich List, *The National System of Political Economy*, funded in part (if I remember correctly) by Pennsylvania steel interests.
Re: FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan
Besides tariffs, Germany developed the finest educational system in the world. For example, most of the most famous American economists studied in Germany. The chemical industry was probably leading industry in the late 19th century. German chemical science led the world. Regarding Jim Devine's mention of intellectual property, Germany, like a number of other European countries, had no patent system. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Argentina
IMF Chief Meets with Troubled Argentina Reuters Monday, June 23, 2003; 11:05 PM By Hugh Bronstein BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - The head of the International Monetary Fund began talks with Argentina's President Nestor Kirchner Monday, as the country's new government made a fresh start at pulling the economy out of its debt crisis. IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler also met Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna, as well as bankers and businessmen. The two-day meetings come 18 months after Argentina staged the world's biggest debt default and were seen by Wall Street as a preliminary step in the country's financial rehabilitation. We would hope that the IMF encourages Argentina to move quickly on the debt restructuring and presses upon the Argentine authorities the need to make more of a fiscal effort, said Abigail McKenna, a portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management and member of the steering panel of the Argentina Bondholders Committee. As the meetings took place, several hundred protesters from left-wing groups gathered in downtown Buenos Aires to protest Koehler's presence. Some demonstrators burned a U.S. flag. Officials in the government, the IMF and the United States -- the top IMF shareholder -- have said the country would benefit from a long-term lending deal to replace an intermediate accord set to expire in August. But the Kirchner government is keen to protect its citizens from IMF-style austerity after a four-year recession pushed millions of middle class workers into poverty and joblessness. Lavagna, under a previous government last year, engaged in a war of words with the IMF over his softly-go-softly approach to austerity programs. In a possible sign of progress, the government said on Monday it would give state help to thousands of poor Argentines unable to make mortgage payments. That may allow the government to end an emergency measure that prevents banks from foreclosing on mortgages -- a measure that irked the IMF. With bond restructuring talks yet to start and the economy just beginning to grow, expectations were muted as Koehler made the rounds in Buenos Aires. Market players did not expect a new IMF program for Argentina to be announced this week. Koehler was expected to speak publicly about his trip late Tuesday afternoon after meeting with legislators, provincial governors and Central Bank chief Alfonso Prat Gay. Considered a star pupil of free-market policies in the 1990s, Argentina fell from grace with the IMF and United States after mismanagement led to economic collapse at the end of 2001 when the country defaulted on $95 billion in debt. The IMF drew heavy fire for its role in the crisis -- with many Argentines saying their country made a major mistake by following the lender's advice -- and for its failure to bail out the country. But six months ago, the two sides managed to strike a $6.8-billion debt rollover deal, which expires in August. Latin America's No. 3 economy is one of the largest debtors to multilateral lenders. Argentina owes $14 billion to the IMF and $31 billion to multilaterals as a whole.
Re: FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan
- Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Besides tariffs, Germany developed the finest educational system in the world. For males. Ian
Re: Marx on India
I have mentioned several times that I have written about Marx and India. My research led me to believe that Marx was more concerned about refuting Henry Carey than about India. Carey was trying to sabotage Marx's relationship with the New York Tribune. He believed that England was responsible for all the ills in the world, so Marx suggested that England might have some positive influence. I doubt that he ever thought that these articles would be taken to be a major indication of his theory economic development. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan
You might have said CERTAIN males, since their system was hardly egalitarian. On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 09:19:28PM -0700, Ian Murray wrote: - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Besides tariffs, Germany developed the finest educational system in the world. For males. Ian -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan
- Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 9:22 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] FW: [PEN-L] On free trade Re: Query from a Venezuelan You might have said CERTAIN males, since their system was hardly egalitarian. === What, are you saying intra-gender inegalitarianism was worse than the inter-gender inegalitarianism? Ian
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
There is no promised land, there's evolution and us; an open-ended adventure. Ian Sure Ian, although there is also the _possibility_ of revolution! But this still remains true: How will we know when we are there? How will we know? Compare this against: And let us ensure that when George Bush tries to sabotage the multilateral system in September, we know precisely which side we are on. Why can't we be againts both Bush and the WTO? And don't ask me what the third alternative is. Sometimes, there are only two, sometimes there are more than two. If only I knew which is when! But this time, I choose to look for the third or the forth or the fifth or Best, Sabri
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
- Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] Why can't we be againts both Bush and the WTO? = Most definitely we can. It's how to create collective action-imagination for designing institutions for the 21st century that is at issue given lefty norms. And don't ask me what the third alternative is. Sometimes, there are only two, sometimes there are more than two. If only I knew which is when! But this time, I choose to look for the third or the forth or the fifth or Best, Sabri = What is the 3cubed way? :-) Ian
PK
[and when will he write TRAGEDY?] [NYTimes] June 24, 2003 Denial and Deception By PAUL KRUGMAN Politics is full of ironies. On the White House Web site, George W. Bush's speech from Oct. 7, 2002 - in which he made the case for war with Iraq - bears the headline Denial and Deception. Indeed. There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious. About the deception: Leaks from professional intelligence analysts, who are furious over the way their work was abused, have given us a far more complete picture of how America went to war. Thanks to reporting by my colleague Nicholas Kristof, other reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and a magisterial article by John Judis and Spencer Ackerman in The New Republic, we now know that top officials, including Mr. Bush, sought to convey an impression about the Iraqi threat that was not supported by actual intelligence reports. In particular, there was never any evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda; yet administration officials repeatedly suggested the existence of a link. Supposed evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear program was thoroughly debunked by the administration's own experts; yet administration officials continued to cite that evidence and warn of Iraq's nuclear threat. And yet the political and media establishment is in denial, finding excuses for the administration's efforts to mislead both Congress and the public. For example, some commentators have suggested that Mr. Bush should be let off the hook as long as there is some interpretation of his prewar statements that is technically true. Really? We're not talking about a business dispute that hinges on the fine print of the contract; we're talking about the most solemn decision a nation can make. If Mr. Bush's speeches gave the nation a misleading impression about the case for war, close textual analysis showing that he didn't literally say what he seemed to be saying is no excuse. On the contrary, it suggests that he knew that his case couldn't stand close scrutiny. Consider, for example, what Mr. Bush said in his denial and deception speech about the supposed Saddam-Osama link: that there were high-level contacts that go back a decade. In fact, intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam and an infant Al Qaeda in the early 1990's, but found no good evidence of a continuing relationship. So Mr. Bush made what sounded like an assertion of an ongoing relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but phrased it cagily - suggesting that he or his speechwriter knew full well that his case was shaky. Other commentators suggest that Mr. Bush may have sincerely believed, despite the lack of evidence, that Saddam was working with Osama and developing nuclear weapons. Actually, that's unlikely: why did he use such evasive wording if he didn't know that he was improving on the truth? In any case, however, somebody was at fault. If top administration officials somehow failed to apprise Mr. Bush of intelligence reports refuting key pieces of his case against Iraq, they weren't doing their jobs. And Mr. Bush should be the first person to demand their resignations. So why are so many people making excuses for Mr. Bush and his officials? Part of the answer, of course, is raw partisanship. One important difference between our current scandal and the Watergate affair is that it's almost impossible now to imagine a Republican senator asking, What did the president know, and when did he know it? But even people who aren't partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration's dishonest case for war, because they don't want to face the implications. After all, suppose that a politician - or a journalist - admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least, a breach of trust. So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability - and to do so in the face not only of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It's a scary prospect. Yet if we can't find people willing to take the risk - to face the truth and act on it - what will happen to our democracy?
