Re: Silent Takeover
I ordered it from Amazon...was then told it was a poor publishers me-too rival to Naomi Klein...would be amused to hear other views...meanwhile I would have thought Stiglitz Globalization and its Discontents should be nearer this list's essence (again a provocation to tell me how wrong I am) chris macrae www.valuetrue.com transparency standards community and www.normanmacrae.com future economics a stiglitz bookmark: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4454068,00.html (if you have a better favourite one, love to know) [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: "john hull" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: 09 July 2002 5:28 AM Subject: Silent Takeover > Howdy, > > Has anybody read "The Silent Takeover: Global > Capitalism and the Death of Democracy" by Noreena > Hertz? If so, is it any good? > > Curiously yours, > jsh > > > > __ > Do You Yahoo!? > Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free > http://sbc.yahoo.com > >
RE: Silent Takeover
i read this awhile back; it's kind of thin. the most interesting thing is that Ms. Hertz used to be a go-go globalizer (helped set up a stock exchange in russia, fr'instance) who then "turned." but her book is pro-capitalism at bottom and "liberal" in the classic sense of the word - her main fear of globalization is the creation of non-sovereign global governance ... meddling in national affairs. i guess "The Silent Takeover" is a subversive book - if you picked it up as a prop for, say, protesting the G-7 you might find yourself nodding in agreement with things you're protesting against. "Capitalism", she argues, "is clearly the best system for generating wealth, and free trade and open capital markets have brought unprecedented economic growth to most if not all of the world". that's a quote from the book, plucked out of a review of it in "Socialism Today" http://www.socialismtoday.org/65/hertz.html which neatly illustrates the tension between Hertz's themes and the themes the book appears to be about. books & covers and all that. Hertz's other main point is that the rise of global multinational companies has overshadowed the power of politicians. consumers thus empowered too - moreso than voters. but she's not very convincing on why this is necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion. etb > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of > chris macrae > Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 11:03 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Silent Takeover> > > I ordered it from Amazon...was then told it was a poor publishers me-too > rival to Naomi Klein...would be amused to hear other views...meanwhile I > would have thought Stiglitz Globalization and its Discontents should be > nearer this list's essence (again a provocation to tell me how wrong I am) > > chris macrae www.valuetrue.com transparency standards community and > www.normanmacrae.com future economics > > a stiglitz bookmark: > http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4454068,00.html > (if you have a better favourite one, love to know) [EMAIL PROTECTED] > - Original Message - > From: "john hull" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: 09 July 2002 5:28 AM > Subject: Silent Takeover > > > > Howdy, > > > > Has anybody read "The Silent Takeover: Global > > Capitalism and the Death of Democracy" by Noreena > > Hertz? If so, is it any good? > > > > Curiously yours, > > jsh > > > > > > > > __ > > Do You Yahoo!? > > Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free > > http://sbc.yahoo.com > > > > > >
RE: Silent Takeover
The chief failing of the mainstream "antiglobalization" movement is, IMO, they fail to recognize the extent that the global corporate economy rests on state intervention. Or at least, they fail to make the obvious deductions from such an analysis. I've seen many, like Chomsky, who argue correctly that the so-called global "market" economy is really mercantilist, and that the "progressive" 20th century regulatory state was really created in the interests of corporate power. But instead of drawing the reasonable conclusion that the remedy for the evils of corporate capitalism is to *dismantle* the statist apparatus it depends on, they argue for further *increasing* the power of the state. I would argue that the rise of transnational corporations is a "bad thing" because they are products of state capitalism. Giant corporations, from the late 19th century on, have been statist institutions, and the plutocrats associated with them have been rent-seekers. Do away with state capitalist subsidies, legal privilege, and other forms of intervention in the free market, and the giant corporations would cease to exist, for the most part. In the case of the global economy this means, for starters, doing away with the protections for the patent monopoly under the Uruguay Round of GATT and other "intellectual property" accords. Their primary effect is to give Western capital a legal monopoly on productive technology for its effective lifetime, and permanently relegate the Third World to providing raw materials and sweatshop labor. It also means ceasing to subsidize long-distance transportation--railroads, highways, merchant marines, and airports--with tax revenue, and instead letting them fund themselves with user fees charged pro rata according to the costs that users impose on the system. By enabling big business to externalize its long-distance shipping costs on the taxpayer, such subsidies in effect underwrite the inefficiencies of economic centralization. Finally, it means eliminating the role of the U.S. national security state in propping up corporate rule overseas--what Thomas Friedman referred to, approvingly, when he said that behind the "invisible hand" of the market lies the visible hand of the IMF, World Bank, and U.S. armed forces. The power structure in Latin America would look a lot different if the School of the Americas (excuse me, WHISC) wasn't there providing fraternal aid to death squads. If all these forms of statist intervention were ended, I suspect the only global trade would be in geographically limited raw materials and luxury goods like "genuine French champagne." Such goods alone would have a high enough value-to-weight ratio to pay the expense of shipping. Almost all manufactured goods would be produced a lot closer to where the consumers live, and the production facilities would be locally owned. >From: "Burns, Erik" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: RE: Silent Takeover >Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 13:39:23 +0100 > >i read this awhile back; it's kind of thin. the most interesting thing is >that Ms. Hertz used to be a go-go globalizer (helped set up a stock >exchange >in russia, fr'instance) who then "turned." but her book is pro-capitalism >at >bottom and "liberal" in the classic sense of the word - her main fear of >globalization is the creation of non-sovereign global governance ... >meddling in national affairs. i guess "The Silent Takeover" is a subversive >book - if you picked it up as a prop for, say, protesting the G-7 you might >find yourself nodding in agreement with things you're protesting against. > >"Capitalism", she argues, "is clearly the best system for generating >wealth, >and free trade and open capital markets have brought unprecedented economic >growth to most if not all of the world". > >that's a quote from the book, plucked out of a review of it in "Socialism >Today" http://www.socialismtoday.org/65/hertz.html which neatly illustrates >the tension between Hertz's themes and the themes the book appears to be >about. books & covers and all that. > >Hertz's other main point is that the rise of global multinational companies >has overshadowed the power of politicians. consumers thus empowered too - >moreso than voters. but she's not very convincing on why this is >necessarily >a bad thing, in my opinion. > >etb > > > > > -Original Message- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of > > chris macrae > > Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 11:03 AM > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: Re: Silent Tak
Re: Silent Takeover
Kevin Carson wrote: > I would argue that the rise of transnational corporations is a "bad thing" > because they are products of state capitalism. Giant corporations, from the > late 19th century on, have been statist institutions, and the plutocrats > associated with them have been rent-seekers. Do away with state capitalist > subsidies, legal privilege, and other forms of intervention in the free > market, and the giant corporations would cease to exist, for the most part. Frankly, this strikes me as quite unlikely. There are lots of big government policies that encourage firms to be smaller than they would be in a free market. Double taxation of corporate income is the most obvious. Antitrust laws tend to be used against large market leaders. A lot of regulations only kick in if you have more than 50 or 100 employees. And once you are talking multinational corporations, there are other government policies discouraging cross-national integration. Protectionism, most obviously, tends to preserve the firms in each nation that aren't efficient enough to compete with the world's market leaders. You're right that there are some government policies pushing in the other way (any time regulations impose a fixed cost, firms' minimum efficient scale mathematically shifts to the right), but on balance I think you're wrong. Under laissez-faire, big corporations would be bigger than they are now. But to quote Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with that." -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] "He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it." Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
Re: Silent Takeover
Bryan Caplan wrote: > A lot of regulations only kick in if you have more than 50 or 100 > employees. Some explicitly kick out, though. I dimly remember one concerning visas, that said roughly "If the HR department says the firm needs this alien employee, and the firm has >N employees, we (the INS) will believe it, but a smaller firm must back it up." Designed presumably to discourage phony enterprises whose principal purpose is to get a visa for the owner's brother-in-law. -- Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
Re: Silent Takeover
I think you're underestimating the massive effects of state capitalist intervention not only individuallly, but the synergy between them. Regarding transportation subsidies alone, Tibor Machan wrote a good article for The Freeman (August 99, I think) against not only transportation subsidies, but against the use of immanent domain for highways and airports, as well. He admitted that this would almost certainly involve a massive decentralization of the economy, but responded by questioning whether that was necessarily a bad thing. As for patents, can we seriously doubt that the pattern of control over productive technology would be a lot different without them? By no means are these the only forms of state intervention--I just stuck to them for reasons of length in my original post. Tucker's big four--besides patents, the money, landlord and tariff monopolies--are at the foundation of the legal structure corporate power depends on. Then there's the subsidy of primitive accumulation--enclosures, expropriation of copyholders, slavery, colonial conquest, etc.--without which the concentration of ownership and economic power would almost certainly be much less. Transnational agribusiness certainly wouldn't exist on anything like its present pattern, without something like an enclosure movement occuring in the Third World this century. The military-industrial complex has a lot to do with what the high tech industry looks like now. It is also probably responsible for the very existence of the jumbo jet industry--without government demand for heavy bombers, the demand for jumbo jets alone wouldn't have paid for the specialized machine tools. And while we're at it, the value of plant and equipment in the U.S. almost doubled during World War II, mostly at taxpayer expense. In the specific case of antitrust laws, which you mentioned, the main cases that come to mind are Standard Oil, AT&T and Microsoft--in all three cases, centrally important resources or infrastructures on which the whole corporate economy depended, where price-gouging could hurt corporate interests in general. It reminds me of Engels' prediction of the "mixed economy" in Anti-Duhring. When corporate capitalism reaches a certain level of complexity, capitalists will act through their state to plan and stabilize the corporate economy--which will entail, among other things, nationalizing infrastructures of central importance to the entire economy. In this country, it was done through antitrust instead. Most of the "progressive" and New Deal regulatory state were part of the same phenomenon--what Kolko called political capitalism, Weinstein called corporate liberalism, and the Frankfurt school people called planned capitalism. Gabriel Kolko argued that oligopoly markets wouldn't even exist without federal regulation. Most of the trusts at the turn of the century were over-leveraged and losing market share to smaller, more efficient competitors. The Clayton Act's "unfair competition" provisions, however, made price war much less likely and in effect created a state-sponsored trade association for each industry. From this time on, market share largely stabilized, and the world was finally safe for oligopoly. The liberal goo-goos in the "public" school system sell all these statist measures as populist-motivated "countervailing power" against big business. But bleeding hearts like Upton Sinclair were just useful idiots to help sell the measures to the public--they were really rent-seeking measures on behalf of corporate power. >From: Bryan Caplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Frankly, this strikes me as quite unlikely. There are lots of big >government policies that encourage firms to be smaller than they would >be in a free market. Double taxation of corporate income is the most >obvious. Antitrust laws tend to be used against large market leaders. >A lot of regulations only kick in if you have more than 50 or 100 >employees. > >And once you are talking multinational corporations, there are other >government policies discouraging cross-national integration. >Protectionism, most obviously, tends to preserve the firms in each >nation that aren't efficient enough to compete with the world's market >leaders. > >You're right that there are some government policies pushing in the >other way (any time regulations impose a fixed cost, firms' minimum >efficient scale mathematically shifts to the right), but on balance I >think you're wrong. Under laissez-faire, big corporations would be >bigger than they are now. But to quote Seinfeld, "Not that there's >anything wrong with that." >-- > Prof. Bryan Caplan >Department of Economics George Mason University > http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one >would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not >nece
Re: Silent Takeover
Kevin Carson wrote: > > I think you're underestimating the massive effects of state capitalist > intervention not only individuallly, but the synergy between them. Don't forget the synergies on the other side. > Regarding transportation subsidies alone, Tibor Machan wrote a good article > for The Freeman (August 99, I think) against not only transportation > subsidies, but against the use of immanent domain for highways and airports, > as well. He admitted that this would almost certainly involve a massive > decentralization of the economy, but responded by questioning whether that > was necessarily a bad thing. First, the roads and airports are already here, so there would not be much of a decentralizing effect of cutting off subsidies and eminent domain now. Second, at least part of the subsidies have been to sustain small communities that can't carry their own weight. That was one of the main pro-airline regulation arguments - cross-subsidizing small unviable airports with monopoly pricing in big cities. > As for patents, can we seriously doubt that > the pattern of control over productive technology would be a lot different > without them? Most IO economists think the effect of patents is over-estimated. In exceptional industries like pharmaceuticals where patents are important, the main effect would probably just be to end most R&D. > By no means are these the only forms of state intervention--I just stuck to > them for reasons of length in my original post. Tucker's big four--besides > patents, the money, landlord and tariff monopolies--are at the foundation of > the legal structure corporate power depends on. Tucker is a great writer, but his economic understanding was spotty at best. Rothbard has a good critique in *Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature*. A few simple points: 1. What Tucker calls the "money monopoly" in fact leads to a much higher rate of monetary growth than free banking would. 2. You can argue about exactly what effect government land grants had on the land market. But land ownership has never been concentrated enough in the U.S. for collusion to work. Even if you handed all land over to 1000 corporations, there is little reason to think land prices would be any higher. 3. Tariffs, as I said, are globally deconcentrating. Without them, inefficient national industries would be driven out of business by the world's best. > Then there's the subsidy of primitive accumulation--enclosures, > expropriation of copyholders, slavery, colonial conquest, etc.--without > which the concentration of ownership and economic power would almost > certainly be much less. Transnational agribusiness certainly wouldn't exist > on anything like its present pattern, without something like an enclosure > movement occuring in the Third World this century. You've also got plenty of political efforts to prevent agribusiness and protect local farmers. Hardly clear that the net effect is pro- concentration. > The military-industrial complex has a lot to do with what the high tech > industry looks like now. It is also probably responsible for the very > existence of the jumbo jet industry--without government demand for heavy > bombers, the demand for jumbo jets alone wouldn't have paid for the > specialized machine tools. And while we're at it, the value of plant and > equipment in the U.S. almost doubled during World War II, mostly at taxpayer > expense. During the 1990's, we were able to see the California military high-tech sector switch significantly into civilian production. The latter may have been less concentrated in some ways, but it is not a clear call either, even in the areas where copyright doesn't matter. > In the specific case of antitrust laws, which you mentioned, the main cases > that come to mind are Standard Oil, AT&T and Microsoft--in all three cases, > centrally important resources or infrastructures on which the whole > corporate economy depended, where price-gouging could hurt corporate > interests in general. It reminds me of Engels' prediction of the "mixed > economy" in Anti-Duhring. When corporate capitalism reaches a certain level > of complexity, capitalists will act through their state to plan and > stabilize the corporate economy--which will entail, among other things, > nationalizing infrastructures of central importance to the entire economy. > In this country, it was done through antitrust instead. Most of the > "progressive" and New Deal regulatory state were part of the same > phenomenon--what Kolko called political capitalism, Weinstein called > corporate liberalism, and the Frankfurt school people called planned > capitalism. > > Gabriel Kolko argued that oligopoly markets wouldn't even exist without > federal regulation. Most of the trusts at the turn of the century were > over-leveraged and losing market share to smaller, more efficient > competitors. The Clayton Act's "unfair competition" provisions, however, > made pric
Re: Silent Takeover
<< I think you're underestimating the massive effects of state capitalist intervention not only individuallly, but the synergy between them. Regarding transportation subsidies alone, Tibor Machan wrote a good article for The Freeman (August 99, I think) against not only transportation subsidies, but against the use of immanent domain for highways and airports, as well. >> I think your argument is worth a lot of consideration. Please bear with me as the proofreader inside suggests you mean "eminent" (rather than "imminent") domain in referring to the alleged *right* of governments to take control of private property for public use. (Which, btw, smacks of something the U.S. criticizes other systems of government for adhering to: the philosophy that *a governing group of peoples* may claim sovereign power over all lands within jurisdiction. I think the U.S. often refers to that thinking as *communism,* but I could be mistaken.just as the "voice" that claims to speak with authority for U.S. govt is often mistaken when it attempts to describe other -- or even its own, for that matter -- doctrines. just some rambling thoughts, ~Terri
Re: Silent Takeover
>From: Bryan Caplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >First, the roads and airports are already here, so there would not be >much of a decentralizing effect of cutting off subsidies and eminent >domain now. But because of the effect of subsidies in distorting the market price link between quantity supplied and quantity demanded, the system will always tend to be overwhelmed with demand beyond its capacity. That's why, according to the estimates of some government officials, the most urgently needed repairs to highway and bridge infrastructure are increasing several times faster than the money appropriated for that purpose. Highways are increasingly congested; and (until 9-11, at least) one of the big issues was airport congestion, with planes stacked up over major airports every time it clouded up. Any time you artificially conceal the real cost of something with subsidies, the demand will outstrip supply. And the more inputs like transportation are subsidized, the more business will tend to use them extensively, by increasing input, rather than increasing efficiency in output per unit of input. So state-subsidized, centralized infrastructure systems turn into Stalinist dinosaurs, generating far more demand than they are capable of meeting, and being constantly bombarded with demands to expand their capacity. If you take away the sugar tit, and build or expand airports and highways only on land that is willingly sold, with building and maintenance costs obtained entirely from weight-based user fees, the costs of shipping will continue to rise dramatically, and the system will continue to become more congested until it reaches the breaking point. Ongoing maintenance costs are an important issue in their own right, BTW--the highway beds weren't designed to handle the abuse caused by 18-wheelers. >Second, at least part of the subsidies have been to sustain small >communities that can't carry their own weight. That was one of the main >pro-airline regulation arguments - cross-subsidizing small unviable >airports with monopoly pricing in big cities. How small a community are we talking about here? Economists who specialize in issues of economy of scale--Walter Adams and Barry Stein, for example--argue that production in large-scale manufacturing industry takes place at many times peak economy of scale. Barry Stein argues, besides, that even with production at a third of maximum economy of scale, in terms of unit cost of production, costs would rise only 5% or so. I think you could go well below that, and still have the minor increases in production cost offset by decreased distribution cost (Ralph Borsodi's law). Kirkpatrick Sale claims that most light and medium consumer goods can be produced fairly efficiently in factories of fewer than fifty workers, serving a market of a few thousand. No doubt there would be cultural problems presented by the bad habit of looking to men in suits to fix everything from their desks 1000 miles away. But there's no inherent barrier to such a diversified local economy that couldn't be solved by intensive education in (the 1970s version of) Karl Hess, Colin Ward, and the *Appropriate Technology Sourcebook*. >Most IO economists think the effect of patents is over-estimated. In >exceptional industries like pharmaceuticals where patents are important, >the main effect would probably just be to end most R&D. Do you mean over-estimated in terms of consumer cost, the level of concentration, the extent of Western control of production in the Third World, or something else? I think the IP provisions of GATT were important to those who wanted to prevent the emergence of native-owned competition. David Noble, in *America by Design*, argued that pooling or exchange of patents has been one of the chief mechanisms for industrial concentration. The U.S. chemical industry received a huge boost during WWI when A. Mitchell Palmer distributed seized German patents to American companies (weighted heavily toward the largest). >Tucker is a great writer, but his economic understanding was spotty at >best. Rothbard has a good critique in *Egalitarianism as a Revolt >Against Nature*. A few simple points: >1. What Tucker calls the "money monopoly" in fact leads to a much >higher rate of monetary growth than free banking would. But how much *availability*, to what groups, and at what interest cost? >2. You can argue about exactly what effect government land grants had >on the land market. But land ownership has never been concentrated >enough in the U.S. for collusion to work. Even if you handed all land >over to 1000 corporations, there is little reason to think land prices >would be any higher. The mutualist critique of landlordism goes beyond land grants. In settler societies like this, one of the early state's most important actions is to preempt ownership of land, transfer it to politically connected groups like land speculator
Re: Silent Takeover
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please bear with me >as the proofreader inside suggests you mean "eminent" (rather than >"imminent") domain in referring to the alleged *right* of governments to >take >control of private property for public use. Yep, you caught me. D'oh!! _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
Re: Silent Takeover
>> . . . suggests you mean "eminent" (rather than >> "imminent") domain . . . What he wrote first was "immanent", which makes more obvious sense than either of the above. ;) -- Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
Re: Silent Takeover
Kevin Carson wrote: > > >From: Bryan Caplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > >First, the roads and airports are already here, so there would not be > >much of a decentralizing effect of cutting off subsidies and eminent > >domain now. > > But because of the effect of subsidies in distorting the market price link > between quantity supplied and quantity demanded, the system will always tend > to be overwhelmed with demand beyond its capacity. You're conflating subsidies with lack of congestion pricing. They're separate issues. > If you take away the sugar tit, and build or expand airports and highways > only on land that is willingly sold, with building and maintenance costs > obtained entirely from weight-based user fees, the costs of shipping will > continue to rise dramatically, and the system will continue to become more > congested until it reaches the breaking point. Ongoing maintenance costs > are an important issue in their own right, BTW--the highway beds weren't > designed to handle the abuse caused by 18-wheelers. I agree that lack of user fees is a problem. But what lack of user fees and concentration have to do with each other remains mysterious. > >Second, at least part of the subsidies have been to sustain small > >communities that can't carry their own weight. That was one of the main > >pro-airline regulation arguments - cross-subsidizing small unviable > >airports with monopoly pricing in big cities. > > How small a community are we talking about here? Economists who specialize > in issues of economy of scale--Walter Adams and Barry Stein, for > example--argue that production in large-scale manufacturing industry takes > place at many times peak economy of scale. This is the standard argument of fervent antitrusters, but it does not strike me as remotely convincing. There are all sorts of fixed costs - harder to measure but just as real - that their estimates ignore. And intuitively, why would firms keep expanding well beyond their efficient scale? If you want to blame legal persecution of smaller firms, you would have an internally consistent story, though it is hard to see what this persecution consists in. > But there's no inherent > barrier to such a diversified local economy that couldn't be solved by > intensive education in (the 1970s version of) Karl Hess, Colin Ward, and the > *Appropriate Technology Sourcebook*. I'd say they're just crackpots. > >1. What Tucker calls the "money monopoly" in fact leads to a much > >higher rate of monetary growth than free banking would. > > But how much *availability*, to what groups, and at what interest cost? Banking, historically weighed down with draconian pro-smallness regulations (branch banking laws) seems like a particularly bad example for you. In any case, what do you think banks are doing now? No bank is big enough to have much effect on depositor or borrower interest rates. They lend to people who can repay at interest rates that adjust for default, etc. Why would small banks be any different? > But at least as important is the ongoing restriction of > access to land, by enforcing absenee landlord rights over tenants and over > unoccupied land. It is by this ongoing restriction of access that occupier > and user has to pay a monopoly price to the landlord. How is vacant land different from vacant rental cars? Are we paying a monopoly price for rental cars? Owning stuff you aren't currently using is ubiquitous, and getting rid of it would be a disaster. > >3. Tariffs, as I said, are globally deconcentrating. Without them, > >inefficient national industries would be driven out of business by the > >world's best. > > Historically, though, tariffs also first helped to build up concentrated > industry on a national scale *within* this country. Fine. That's the way a lot of pro-smallness regulation works. But this is just the flip side of my original point about globalization: Yes, it is increasing concentration in *some sense of the word*, and yes, this increased concentration is a good thing. > First Britain, then the > U.S., industrialized under the protection of tariffs, and then adopted "free > trade" as an ideology when it was safe to do so. So would U.S. and U.K. have been worse off if they had never had tariffs? Or what? > >During the 1990's, we were able to see the California military high-tech > >sector switch significantly into civilian production. The latter may > >have been less concentrated in some ways, but it is not a clear call > >either, even in the areas where copyright doesn't matter. > > Nevertheless, the high tech industry is the collective beneficiary of past > state capitalism or "military Keynesianism," and its ability to make such > strategic changes is heavily influenced by a privileged position resulting > from previous state aid to accumulation. Hard to see how previous government contracts improve your ability to make strategy changes. The reality looked qui
RE: Silent Takeover--IMO??
--- Kevin Carson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "The chief failing of the mainstream "antiglobalization" movement is, IMO, they fail to recognize the extent that the global corporate economy rests on state intervention." What does "IMO" mean? -jsh __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com
Re: Silent Takeover--IMO??
john hull wrote: > What does "IMO" mean? In My Opinion. You'll also see IMH(umble)O, whence IMNSHO ... IMO is also a brand of sour cream or some such. -- Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
RE: Silent Takeover--IMO??
Sorry. It means "in my opinion." >From: john hull <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: RE: Silent Takeover--IMO?? >Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 20:54:47 -0700 (PDT) > >--- Kevin Carson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >"The chief failing of the mainstream >"antiglobalization" movement is, IMO, they fail to >recognize the extent that the global corporate economy >rests on state intervention." > >What does "IMO" mean? > >-jsh > >__ >Do You Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes >http://autos.yahoo.com _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com