free trade in animals
[or is it free mobility for different species of labor power?] U.S. May Expand Access To Endangered Species By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, October 11, 2003; Page A01 The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries. Giving Americans access to endangered animals, officials said, would feed the gigantic U.S. demand for live animals, skins, parts and trophies, and generate profits that would allow poor nations to pay for conservation of the remaining animals and their habitat. This and other proposals that pursue conservation through trade would, for example, open the door for American trophy hunters to kill the endangered straight-horned markhor in Pakistan; license the pet industry to import the blue fronted Amazon parrot from Argentina; permit the capture of endangered Asian elephants for U.S. circuses and zoos; and partially resume the trade in African ivory. No U.S. endangered species would be affected. Conservationists think it's a bad idea. "It's a very dangerous precedent to decide that wildlife exploitation is in the best interest of wildlife," said Adam Roberts, a senior research associate at the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute, an advocacy group for endangered species. Killing or capturing even a few animals is hardly the best way to protect endangered species, conservationists say. Many charge that the policies cater to individuals and businesses that profit from animal exploitation. The latest proposal involves an interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that deviates radically from the course followed by Republican and Democratic administrations since President Richard M. Nixon signed the act in 1973. The law established broad protection for endangered species, most of which are not native to America, and effectively prohibited trade in them. Kenneth Stansell, assistant director for international affairs at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said there has been a growing realization that the Endangered Species Act provides poor countries no incentive to protect dying species. Allowing American hunters, circuses and the pet industry to pay countries to take fixed numbers of animals from the wild can help protect the remaining animals, he said. U.S. officials note that such trade is already open to hunters, pet importers and zoos in other Western nations. They say the idea is supported by poor countries that are home to the endangered species and would benefit from the revenue. Officials at the Department of Interior and Fish and Wildlife, who are spearheading many of the new policies, said the proposals merely implement rarely used provisions in the law. "This is absolutely consistent with the Endangered Species Act, as written," said David P. Smith, deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks. "I think the nature of the beast is such that there are critics who are going to claim some kind of ulterior motive." Animal welfare advocates question the logic of the new approach, saying that foreign countries and groups that stand to profit will be in charge of determining how many animals can be killed or captured. Advocates also warn that opening the door to legal trade will allow poaching to flourish. "As soon as you place a financial price on the head of wild animals, the incentive is to kill the animal or capture them," Roberts said. "The minute people find out they can have an easier time killing, shipping and profiting from wildlife, they will do so." The proposals also trigger a visceral response: To many animal lovers, these species have emotional and symbolic value, and should never be captured or killed. The Endangered Species Act prohibits removing domestic endangered species from the wild. Until now, that protection was extended to foreign species. Explaining the change, Stansell said, "There is a recognition that these sovereign nations have a different way of managing their natural resources." Indeed, many of the strongest advocates for "sustainable use" programs -- under which some animals are "harvested" to raise money to save the rest -- have been countries that are home to various endangered species. Foreign trade groups and governments have tried for years -- mostly in vain -- to convince the United States that animals are no longer in limited supply, or that capturing or killing fixed numbers would not drive a species to extinction. That could change after Oct. 17, the end of the public comment period on one proposed change. The proposal identified several species: . Morelet's crocodile, an endangered freshwater crocodile found in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Its skin is prized by U.S. leather importers. . The endangered Asian elephant of India and Southeast Asia. The declining population in U.S. breeding prog
Re: Immanuel Wallerstein: America and the World: The Twin Towers as Metaphor
http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/wallerstein.htm > A Bolivian living in Sweden wrote me about this article: "it leaves me kind of puzzled as to what its purpose really is". So let me try to explain what its purpose really is The URL points to an article titled "America and the World: The Twin Towers as Metaphor" that is based on a talk given by Immanuel Wallerstein at Brooklyn College in Dec. 5, 2001. It is basically a statement of Wallerstein's belief that the US is a declining hegemonic power and that it no longer has the power to dictate military or economic terms to the rest of the world. This requires a bit of verbal and intellectual acrobatics since the attack on the Pentagon and the WTC were basically interpreted as and act of Islamic radical revenge against a hegemonic power. Although Wallerstein is not very clear on this, he seems to say that the collapse of the towers is a sign of weakness: "Technology turns out to be less than perfect as a protective shield." I am not sure how valid this argument is since the economic institutions housed in the WTC have by now cranked up to full capacity. Wallerstein states: "The story of U.S. and world power can be resumed quite simply at this moment. I do not believe that America and Americans are the cause of all the world's miseries and injustices. I do believe they are their prime beneficiaries. And this is the fundamental problem of the U.S. as a nation located in a world of nations." I find this rather cryptic. My understanding of US imperialism is exactly that of a cause of all the world's miseries and injustices. By stating that the US is a beneficiary of the world's miseries and injustices rather than their cause, Wallerstein evokes the image of a driver on the Interstate loading up his car with goods that have fallen off the back of a trailer truck. Maybe he was trying to say something different. I don't know. To my great astonishment, the powerful mandarin figure Wallerstein alludes to a couple of television figures. "Law and Order", a show he apparently finds the time to watch, is invoked to make a point that even anarchists can be labeled as "terrorist". A Chris Matthews book that refers to the "cowboy souls" of Americans is held up to gentle ridicule. Matthews is a cable news talking head who combines mainstream Democratic Party politics and the generic Fox TV barking dog style. Referring to Matthews, Wallerstein poses the question thusly: "The question before Americans is really the following. If American hegemony is in slow decline, and I believe it unquestionably is, will we lose the ideals because we will have less power to override them? Will our cowboy souls erect barbed wire around our national ranch in order to guard our privileges in danger of decline, as though they could not escape through the barbed wire? Let me suggest here another metaphor that comes from the Twin Towers. Towers that are destroyed can be rebuilt. But will we rebuild them in the same way - with the same assurance that we are reaching for the stars and doing it right, with the same certainty that they will be seen as a beacon to the world? Or will we rebuild in other ways, after careful reflection about what we really need and what is really possible for us, and really desirable for us?" This seems like a rather inflated formulation of an age-old hypothesis--namely if the American economy collapses even further, will the US ruling class be forced to scrap its democratic pretensions. As they used to say in Houston, prolly. Wallerstein has high hopes that the US can learn to get along with the rest of the world: "It is not Osama bin Laden with whom we must conduct a dialogue. We must start with our near friends and allies - with Canada and Mexico, with Europe, with Japan. And once we have trained ourselves to hear them and to believe that they too have ideals and interests, that they too have ideas and hopes and aspirations, then and only then perhaps shall we be ready to dialogue with the rest of the world, that is, with the majority of the world." This seems feasible only if Immanuel Wallerstein were President and James O'Connor Vice President--with David Harvey as Secretary of State and John Bellamy Foster Secretary of Defense (hope they don't have a falling out like Condi and Rummy). But in the meantime, with the cast of players in Washington--either Democrat or Republican--this seems like a dim hope tantamount to a shark becoming a vegetarian. Wallerstein's speech ends up with a grand rhetorical flourish, invoking Sojurner Truth, Hillel, and Léopold-Sédar Senghor. I would have preferred a couple of statistics on oil depletion or infant mortality rates but then I have always been somewhat crass. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: day of locust
Excellent! But to call Davis "autistic" is an insult to people with autism. From the outside, this seems rather ridiculous. Davis, to begin with, is an autistic centrist in the Democratic Leadership Council mode who I agree. Calling him a centrist is damning enough. Dan -- -- BUSHES WILL TREMBLE WHEN KUCINICH IS NOMINATED BY BOTH THE GREENS AND THE DEMOCRATS. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org "I uke, therefore I am." -- Cool Hand Uke "I log on, therefore I seem to be." -- Rodd Gnawkin Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.oro.net/~dscanlan
Re: Fw: UN expert exposes starvation policy
mostly people (in the US, outside the left) seem incapable of rational listening on this subject. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > -Original Message- > From: joanna bujes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 1:20 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Fw: UN expert exposes starvation policy > > > Hey Jim, > > Thanks for the post. I am no longer capable of rational speech on this > subject. > > Joanna >
Re: Fw: UN expert exposes starvation policy
Hey Jim, Thanks for the post. I am no longer capable of rational speech on this subject. Joanna
Re: day of locust
Excellent! But to call Davis "autistic" is an insult to people with autism. >From the outside, this seems rather ridiculous. Davis, to begin with, is an autistic centrist in the Democratic Leadership Council mode who has governed California for the last five years as a good Republican. In fiscal policy, as well as in prisons, education, and the lubrication of corporate interests, there has been no significant departure from the paradigm of his predecessor Republican Pete Wilson. Indeed, Davis has been such a raving executioner and prison-builder that crime-and-punishment has disappeared as a right-wing wedge issue.< Jim Devine
Fw: UN expert exposes starvation policy
Some very depressing news... >> UN expert Jean Ziegler has documented how Israeli policies are preventing >> Palestinians from having food and water, and thus causing a catastrophic >> humanitarian situation. His report was prepared for the UN High >> Commissioner for Human Rights, to be presented at the UN General Assembly >> next month. Now Israel and the U.S. are seeking to block this report, >> and Israel is even demanding that Ziegler be "disciplined"! Below are >> two articles; one dealing with Ziegler's findings, the next with Israel's >> blocking reaction. >> >> UN Expert reports on Israel's Starvation Policy >> Compiled by Alaqsaintifada.org from AP and Aljazeerah reports - Sept. 18, >> 2003 >> >> A UN human rights expert is preparing to submit a report to the UN >> General Assembly that charges Israel of triggering a "humanitarian >> catastrophe" in the Palestinian territories, newspaper reports said >> yesterday. >> >> The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, said in a >> draft report that the Israeli military is preventing Palestinians >> reaching food and water with restrictions on movement in the territories, >> according to Swiss newspaper Le Temps and news agency ATS. >> >> "There is a permanent, grave violation of the right to food by the >> occupying forces. There is a catastrophic humanitarian situation, and >> really it is absurd," said Jean Ziegler, UN special expert on the right >> to food. >> >> Ziegler, a Swiss university professor, visited the occupied Palestinian >> territories in July and spent 10 days there to gather material for a >> report to the UN General Assembly. >> >> Palestinian villages are circled by troops, preventing food deliveries >> from getting in and farmers from reaching their fields, he said. Many >> villages are forced to buy their water because their previous sources >> have been cut off. >> >> Ziegler also cited the destruction or confiscation of fertile Palestinian >> land for military zones or Jewish colonies. "We saw thousands of olive >> trees destroyed by bulldozers," he said. >> >> Trucks of food sent to Palestinian villages either as aid or for sale are >> stopped at roadblocks and unloaded. Villagers must find another truck to >> load the food again after inspection and complete the journey. "The >> economy is in ruins," he said. >> >> "Markets don't function, peasants don't go to the field, and they are >> humiliated in a very, very shocking way," Ziegler said. More than half >> of Palestinian families eat only once a day, "they are reduced to >> begging" by Israeli military action, and Israel is breaching >> international law by failing to provide much-needed aid, he said. >> >> According to the World Bank, almost one child in 10 in Gaza and the West >> Bank is suffering from severe malnutrition, and 15 percent of children >> aged below 5 are acutely anemic, preventing brain cells from developing >> normally. >> >> Ziegler said that a future Palestinian state should not be "cut up into >> separate 'bantustans'" - a reference to all-black enclaves in apartheid >> South Africa with limited autonomy - and called on Israel to end >> "obstruction of humanitarian relief services". >> >> "The humanitarian catastrophe that is emerging in the Occupied >> Territories must be reversed," the Swiss sociologist and UN expert was >> quoted as saying in the draft. "There can be no justification for harsh >> internal closures that prevent people from having access to food and >> water, otherwise the imposition of such military measures are amounting >> to what has been called a 'policy of starvation'. Provoking hunger and >> malnutrition as a side effect of security measures is totally >> unacceptable and disproportionate and constitutes collective punishment", >> the draft said. >> Israel Accused of Starving West Bank >> By Charles Laurence and Kim Willsher - Gulf News / The Telegraph, Oct. 5, >> 2003 >> >> A United Nations report which blames Israel for causing starvation in >> Gaza and the West Bank has prompted a furious diplomatic row with the >> Israeli government of Ariel Sharon. >> >> The leaked report by Jean Ziegler, a Swiss sociologist and UN special >> envoy, blames Israel's security policies for "collective punishment" of >> the Palestinians. Ziegler spent 10 days in the occupied territories in >> July and was due to present his report to the UN General Assembly in New >> York on November 18. >> >> Furious Israeli officials, however, have denounced the report as "highly >> political", saying that Ziegler had gone beyond his mandate. With support >> from American diplomats at the UN, Israel has called for the report to be >> rejected before it reaches the floor of the Assembly, and asked the UN >> Human Rights Commission, for whom Ziegler was working as a food rights >> specialist, to discipline him. >> >> According to newspaper reports in France, Ziegler's report will not now >> be published until the spring. >> >> Tuvia
day of locust
Here's a decent take, I think, on the recall. The Day of the Locust By Mike Davis The mobs howled again in California, rattling windows on the Potomac. Are the barbarians marching eastward, as they did after the famous tax revolt of the late 1970s, or is this just another West Coast full-moon episode with little national consequence? The larger meaning of Schwarzenegger's triumph of the will, of course, depends on how you interpret the grievances that provided the recall's extraordinary emotional fuel. But I must warn you that analyzing this election is an adventure in a realm of stupefying paradox and contradiction. All the same, it may tell us a great deal about the emerging landscape of American politics. The hardcore ideologues of zero government and McKinley-era capitalism are trumpeting the recall as a new populist revolution in the spirit of Howard Jarvis's Proposition 13 in 1978. They echo local Republican claims that a venal Democratic governor, in league with big unions and the welfare classes, was turning off the lights of free enterprise and driving the hardworking middle classes to Arizona with huge, unfair tax increases. Gray Davis, in a word, was the anti-Christ, wrecking California's golden dream on behalf of his selfish constituencies of school teachers, illegal immigrants, and rich Indians. The Terminator, they assure us, has literally saved California from the yawning abyss of "tax, tax, tax; spend, spend, spend." From the outside, this seems rather ridiculous. Davis, to begin with, is an autistic centrist in the Democratic Leadership Council mode who has governed California for the last five years as a good Republican. In fiscal policy, as well as in prisons, education, and the lubrication of corporate interests, there has been no significant departure from the paradigm of his predecessor Republican Pete Wilson. Indeed, Davis has been such a raving executioner and prison-builder that crime-and-punishment has disappeared as a right-wing wedge issue. Moreover, if California's middle classes have any cause to feel raped and pillaged in recent years, clearly the culprits are Arnold's eminence grise, Pete Wilson, who deregulated the utilities to begin with, and the Bushite power cartels like Enron which looted California's consumers during the phony energy crisis of 2000-01. And it is the Bush administration that has told bankrupt state and municipal governments everywhere to "drop dead" while it shovels billions into the black hole it has created in Iraq. Fiscal crisis should be an issue owned by the Democrats. Strange, then, that almost two-thirds of the voters in the mega-state that supposedly belongs lock, stock, and barrel to the Democrats either endorsed the stealth return of Pete Wilson -- the mind whirring within Arnie's brawn -- or voted for a right-wing quack, Tom McClintock. These are the kinds of election returns you expect to see from GOP bedrock states like Idaho or Wyoming, not from the vaunted Left Coast. When you peer at the dynamics of recall rage up close, the whole phenomenon becomes stranger still. Here in San Diego, where I live and the recall originated, the Schwarzenegger blitzkrieg seemed to suck anger out of the clear blue sky. This, after all, isn't Youngstown or even Stockton or San Bernardino. Republican voters, as far as I know, are not being evicted en masse from their homes or forced to steal milk for their staving babies. Far from it, the value of the median family home soared almost $100,000 last year and the area is once again awash with Pentagon dollars. The freeways are clogged with Hummers and other mega-SUVs, while those with luxury lifestyles, carefully tended by armies of brown-skinned laborers, bask in the afterglow of Bush's tax cuts. Enlistment in Arnie's army of "hell no, we're not going to take it anymore" tax protestors visibly bore little relationship to actual economic pain. Yet, for weeks, suburban San Diego has been contorted into visceral, self-righteous rage over the supposedly satanic regime in Sacramento. Indeed exit polls show that, in San Diego as well as statewide, support for Schwarzenegger increased with income and topped out at the country-club and gated-community level. So are California's fat cats merely impersonating populist anger? With so little correlation between actual economic hardship (greatest, of course, in pro-Bustamante Latino and Black inner-city neighborhoods and rural valleys), what explains this astonishing mobilization of voter emotion, particularly in affluent white suburbs? In my microcosm, San Diego, part of the answer could be found at the lower end of the AM dial. At KOGO 600, "San Diego's Radio Mayor," Roger Hedgecock, presides over what, even before the official campaign began), was boastfully labeling itself "Recall Radio." A defrocked former mayor accused of conspiracy and perjury in the 1970s, Hedgecock, who occasionally fills in for Rush Limbaugh on national hate radio, takes credit for the "heavy l
Re: Subject: California Dreaming
I would be surprised if the Chron. did not do the same. On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 03:50:32PM +, Seth Sandronsky wrote: > Hi Michael, > > Two of the state's big daily papers, the LA Times and The Sacramento Bee, > editorialized against Prop. 54 and the recall. I do not remember what > stance the SF Chronicle took on each. > > Seth Sandronsky > > Date:Wed, 8 Oct 2003 08:04:42 -0700 > From:Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: California Dreaming > > It's too early to tell if the recall will turn out badly. For example, > Proposition 54 -- the racial ignorance proposition -- failed because it > Bustamante got millions of dollars for his campaign, which the courts > ruled to be illegal. He turned the money over to the anti-proposition 54 > campaign, which probably turned the tide. > > California's budget last year avoided most of the pain by passing most > of the budget cuts on to the following year. The hard cuts come next > year. Schwarzenegger will have trouble pleasing many people with his > choices, possibly discrediting Republicans even more. > > The negative side of the campaign is too obvious to mention. > > -- > > Michael Perelman > Economics Department > California State University > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Chico, CA 95929 > 530-898-5321 > fax 530-898-5901 > > _ > Get a FREE computer virus scan online from McAfee. > http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: important article
On Friday, October 10, 2003 at 08:33:11 (-0700) Michael Perelman writes: >I read an earlier version of this article. I don't know how it has >changed, but it is very important unless it has changed dramatically. This does sound good. Krueger seems to always do very careful work. Bill
Re: Subject: California Dreaming
Hi Michael, Two of the state's big daily papers, the LA Times and The Sacramento Bee, editorialized against Prop. 54 and the recall. I do not remember what stance the SF Chronicle took on each. Seth Sandronsky Date:Wed, 8 Oct 2003 08:04:42 -0700 From:Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: California Dreaming It's too early to tell if the recall will turn out badly. For example, Proposition 54 -- the racial ignorance proposition -- failed because it Bustamante got millions of dollars for his campaign, which the courts ruled to be illegal. He turned the money over to the anti-proposition 54 campaign, which probably turned the tide. California's budget last year avoided most of the pain by passing most of the budget cuts on to the following year. The hard cuts come next year. Schwarzenegger will have trouble pleasing many people with his choices, possibly discrediting Republicans even more. The negative side of the campaign is too obvious to mention. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 _ Get a FREE computer virus scan online from McAfee. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Putin rattling their chains...
Putin: Why Not Price Oil in Euros? By Catherine Belton Staff Writer President Vladimir Putin said Thursday Russia could switch its trade in oil from dollars to euros, a move that could have far-reaching repercussions for the global balance of power -- potentially hurting the U.S. dollar and economy and providing a massive boost to the euro zone. http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2003/10/10/001.html
Re: Economics of commodities
The issue of the supply and demand for primary commodities such as coffee is one of the those topics that refers to what Marx called "the surface of society" (the realm of competition amongst capitals, vol. III of CAPITAL) rather than dealing with class relations (vol. I of CAPITAL). Thus, it's one of those areas where Marxian and bourgeois economics are in agreement a lot of the time.That is, a mainstream discussion of the inelasticity of the supply of and the demand for primary commodities doesn't produce results that are that different from what Ernest Mandel said. On the "cusp" between orthodox economics and Marx, Michal Kalecki distinguished between the demand-determined prices in the primary sector and the cost-determined prices of manufacturing. On the other hand, the role of class relations as expressed in the capitalist world-system (i.e., imperialism) does structure the relationship between the primary sector and the manufacturing sectors in a way that generally favors the latter. This has been brought out in a lot of the "dependency" literature. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > -Original Message- > From: Jurriaan Bendien [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 3:28 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Economics of commodities > > > In his little book of 1974 called The Second Slump (later, > expanded edition: > La Crise), Ernest Mandel already remarks that agricultural > prices are not > formed in the same way as industrial prices, and refers to > Marx's theory of > absolute and differential rents. A significant increase or decrease in > Russian harvests could have a significant effect on world > market prices for > agricultural commodities. He also discusses the industrialisation of > agriculture in his Introduction to Marx's Capital (Pelican > edition), I think > volume 3, and to some extent in his book Marxist Economic > Theory. I studied > agricultural prices for the case of New Zealand once, because > of the problem > of declining terms of trade (for each imported tractor you > had to export > more and more sheep meat, and so on) and I noticed there was > a literature on > it (I was basically working from journals on agricultural > economics). Some > Marxian authors deal with this, for example, Ben Fine (I > think he did an > article on its in the journal Economy & Society). But, it is a complex > subject, because apart from production conditions and cost > prices, you have > to deal with monopoly pricing and protectionism (see also Guglielmo > Carchedi, For Another Europe, chapter on agriculture). That > is, the cost > structure and sale prices of agricultural goods is distorted by > protectionism and agribusiness monopolies. You can get both studies of > specific corporations, and industry studies, and studies of specific > commodities as well. Marketing boards often provide > statistical information > (e.g. http://www.beveragemarketing.com ). > > In his Speech on Free Trade (1848), Marx specifically refers > to coffee: "You > believe perhaps, gentlemen, that the production of coffee and > sugar is the > natural destiny of the West Indies. Two centuries ago, > nature, which does > not trouble itself about commerce, had planted neither > sugar-cane nor coffee > trees there. And it may be that in less than half a century > you will find > there neither coffee nor sugar, for the East Indies, by means > of cheaper > production, have already successfully broken down this > so-called natural > destiny of the West Indies. And the West Indies, with their > natural wealth, > are as heavy a burden for England as the weavers of Dacca, > who also were > destined from the beginning of time to weave by hand. One > other circumstance > must not be forgotten, namely that, just as everything has become a > monopoly, there are also nowadays some branches of industry > which prevail > over all others, and secure to the nations which especially > foster them the > command of the market of the world. Thus in the commerce of the world, > cotton alone has much greater commercial importance than all > the other raw > materials used in the manufacture of clothing. It is truly > ridiculous for > the Free Traders to refer to the few specialties in each > branch of industry, > throwing them into the balance against the product used in everyday > consumption, and produced most cheaply in those countries in which > manufacture is most highly developed." > > Regards > > Jurriaan > > - Original Message - > From: "Michael Pollak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 11:59 AM > Subject: [PEN-L] Economics of commodities > > > > Is there an economic subspeciality that studies the > dynamics of global > > raw commodity markets? I'm especially interested in > historical studies of > > agricultural commodities, like co
important article
I read an earlier version of this article. I don't know how it has changed, but it is very important unless it has changed dramatically. "Strikes, Scabs and Tread Separations: Labor Strife and the Production of Defective Bridgestone/Firestone Tires" BY: ALAN B. KRUEGER Princeton University Industrial Relations Section, Firestone Library National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) ALEXANDRE MAS Princeton University Industrial Relations Section, Firestone Library Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection: http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=446301 Other Electronic Document Delivery: ftp://ftp.iza.org/dps/dp869.pdf SSRN only offers technical support for papers downloaded from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection location. When URLs wrap, you must copy and paste them into your browser eliminating all spaces. Paper ID: IZA Discussion Paper No. 869 Date: September 2003 Contact: ALAN B. KRUEGER Email: Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Postal: Princeton University Industrial Relations Section, Firestone Library Princeton, NJ 08544-2098 UNITED STATES Phone: 609-258-4046 Fax: 609-258-2907 Co-Auth: ALEXANDRE MAS Email: Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Postal: Princeton University Industrial Relations Section, Firestone Library Princeton, NJ 08544-2098 UNITED STATES ABSTRACT: This paper provides a case study of the effect of labor relations on product quality. We consider whether a long, contentious strike and the hiring of replacement workers at Bridgestone/Firestone's Decatur plant in the mid-1990s contributed to the production of defective tires. Using several independent data sources, and looking before and after the strike and across plants, we find that labor strife at the Decatur plant closely coincided with lower product quality. Monthly data suggest that defects were particularly high around the time concessions were demanded and when large numbers of replacement workers and returning strikers worked side by side. Keywords: labor relations, product quality, Bridgestone/Firestone, strike "Strikes, Scabs and Tread Separations: Labor Strife and the Production of Defective Bridgestone/Firestone Tires" BY: ALAN B. KRUEGER Princeton University Industrial Relations Section, Firestone Library National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) ALEXANDRE MAS Princeton University Industrial Relations Section, Firestone Library Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection: http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=446301 Other Electronic Document Delivery: ftp://ftp.iza.org/dps/dp869.pdf SSRN only offers technical support for papers downloaded from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection location. When URLs wrap, you must copy and paste them into your browser eliminating all spaces. Paper ID: IZA Discussion Paper No. 869 Date: September 2003 Contact: ALAN B. KRUEGER Email: Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Postal: Princeton University Industrial Relations Section, Firestone Library Princeton, NJ 08544-2098 UNITED STATES Phone: 609-258-4046 Fax: 609-258-2907 Co-Auth: ALEXANDRE MAS Email: Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Postal: Princeton University Industrial Relations Section, Firestone Library Princeton, NJ 08544-2098 UNITED STATES ABSTRACT: This paper provides a case study of the effect of labor relations on product quality. We consider whether a long, contentious strike and the hiring of replacement workers at Bridgestone/Firestone's Decatur plant in the mid-1990s contributed to the production of defective tires. Using several independent data sources, and looking before and after the strike and across plants, we find that labor strife at the Decatur plant closely coincided with lower product quality. Monthly data suggest that defects were particularly high around the time concessions were demanded and when large numbers of replacement workers and returning strikers worked side by side. Keywords: labor relations, product quality, Bridgestone/Firestone, strike -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Economics of commodities
- Original Message - From: "Michael Pollak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Is there an economic subspeciality that studies the dynamics of global > raw commodity markets? I'm especially interested in historical studies of > agricultural commodities, like coffee & cocoa. > > Michael One, of many, places to start: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Topics/View.asp?T=103000
PBS documentary on Iraq
Last night PBS aired a Frontline documentary that marked the first retreat from its lockstep support for US wars of aggression since 9/11. You will also be able to view the entire show on the website (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/) starting on October 11. Titled "Truth, War and Consequences", it was basically a liberal "tragic mistake" interpretation such as the kind that cropped up in the 1960s when things turned sour in Indochina. In fact the website has a section titled "What Went Wrong". By "wrong" PBS does not mean the same thing as in the sentence: "Insider trading is wrong". By "wrong" they mean that something has backfired, for example the decision to overrule Jay Garner's plan to hire former Iraqi soldiers to repair roads and other infrastructure. Once these soldiers found themselves unemployed, they naturally resorted to violence. The PBS documentary never once asks the question of whether the US had the *right* to invade and overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein. The most useful aspect of the documentary is that it allows Ahmad Chalabi and Kanan Makiya, who are featured prominently, to hoist themselves on their own petard. For example, when Frontline interviewer Martin Smith, who is also credited as writer, asks Chalabi if there is any connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, Chalabi says of course. He has evidence of this and gave it to the USA. When Smith, who has the demeanor in these interviews of a Catholic schoolboy confronting a pedophile priest, asks if he can see it, Chalabi says he cannot. All in all, it has the impact of a better "Sixty Minutes" episode. There is a telling moment in this documentary that makes the Iraqi resistance understandable. Shortly after a decision has been made by the US to crack down on looting, we see an army patrol that has captured a perpetrator who has a bunch of stolen wood on the top of his aging car. While they dress him down about the evils of looting, a tank rolls over his car reducing it to rubble. Afterwards, GI's "high-five" each other as if the car were a prop on "Fear Factor". Later, Frontline learns that the man is a taxi driver and that the car was his sole means of income. Makiya is a real piece of work, as we put it in the USA. He appears rather disillusioned with what has happened in his native country but cannot make the connection between the US invasion and all that has gone wrong. This Brandeis professor is effusive in his praise of George W. Bush but blames just about everybody else in his administration for lacking the president's commitment to democracy. Makiya has often been described as an ex-Trotskyist. This morning I examined an online version of his "Republic of Fear" to detect any whiff of Marxism. This is what I found: >>All of this development highlights a dilemma whose underpinnings in our century arise within the communist tradition. The Russian experience has deeply affected all thinking on the relationship of political freedoms to development in backward countries irrespective of political persuasion. The contradictions were most paradigmatically expressed in the thought of Leon Trotsky. In his trenchant attack on Stalinism, The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky sought an explanation of the Stalinist phenomenon taken from outside its own peculiar distinctness and history of development. He wrote of the despotism of the new state as being an outcome of "the iron necessity to give birth to and support a privileged minority" in conditions of backwardness and how "the power of the democratic Soviets proved cramping, even unendurable, when the task of the day was to accommodate those privileged groups whose existence was necessary for defense, for industry, for technique and science." The sense is of a transcendent causality maybe beyond the capacities of human intervention, through which today's freedoms have to be sacrificed in the interests of progress. This did not come from an economist, academician, or armchair revolutionary; it came from a leading intellect and political actor of the Russian revolution who had himself been cast aside by the "iron necessity" of the course it later took. What was for Trotsky a wrenching universal and personal dilemma, which he could only resolve by holding fervently onto the idea of world revolution, was transformed in the nationalist withdrawal and accelerating parochialism of all subsequent revolutions into an immutable law of the historical process, one that had been proved by the Stalinist experience. Invariably the ideology that captures this quality of imperial economic necessity in the Third World is the carping on about the "falsity" of bourgeois freedoms and the universal tendency to dislocate the realm of "true" freedom from the political to the social and economic domains. All later revolutions of this century (China, Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria) and all post-World War II nationalisms (Nasserism, Peronism, Ba'thism) have reaffirmed to one degree or another the app
Re: Economics of commodities
In his little book of 1974 called The Second Slump (later, expanded edition: La Crise), Ernest Mandel already remarks that agricultural prices are not formed in the same way as industrial prices, and refers to Marx's theory of absolute and differential rents. A significant increase or decrease in Russian harvests could have a significant effect on world market prices for agricultural commodities. He also discusses the industrialisation of agriculture in his Introduction to Marx's Capital (Pelican edition), I think volume 3, and to some extent in his book Marxist Economic Theory. I studied agricultural prices for the case of New Zealand once, because of the problem of declining terms of trade (for each imported tractor you had to export more and more sheep meat, and so on) and I noticed there was a literature on it (I was basically working from journals on agricultural economics). Some Marxian authors deal with this, for example, Ben Fine (I think he did an article on its in the journal Economy & Society). But, it is a complex subject, because apart from production conditions and cost prices, you have to deal with monopoly pricing and protectionism (see also Guglielmo Carchedi, For Another Europe, chapter on agriculture). That is, the cost structure and sale prices of agricultural goods is distorted by protectionism and agribusiness monopolies. You can get both studies of specific corporations, and industry studies, and studies of specific commodities as well. Marketing boards often provide statistical information (e.g. http://www.beveragemarketing.com ). In his Speech on Free Trade (1848), Marx specifically refers to coffee: "You believe perhaps, gentlemen, that the production of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the West Indies. Two centuries ago, nature, which does not trouble itself about commerce, had planted neither sugar-cane nor coffee trees there. And it may be that in less than half a century you will find there neither coffee nor sugar, for the East Indies, by means of cheaper production, have already successfully broken down this so-called natural destiny of the West Indies. And the West Indies, with their natural wealth, are as heavy a burden for England as the weavers of Dacca, who also were destined from the beginning of time to weave by hand. One other circumstance must not be forgotten, namely that, just as everything has become a monopoly, there are also nowadays some branches of industry which prevail over all others, and secure to the nations which especially foster them the command of the market of the world. Thus in the commerce of the world, cotton alone has much greater commercial importance than all the other raw materials used in the manufacture of clothing. It is truly ridiculous for the Free Traders to refer to the few specialties in each branch of industry, throwing them into the balance against the product used in everyday consumption, and produced most cheaply in those countries in which manufacture is most highly developed." Regards Jurriaan - Original Message - From: "Michael Pollak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 11:59 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Economics of commodities > Is there an economic subspeciality that studies the dynamics of global > raw commodity markets? I'm especially interested in historical studies of > agricultural commodities, like coffee & cocoa. > > Michael > >
Tighter borders --> more immigrants
[The law of unintended consequences] October 10, 2003 PAGE ONE Tighter Border Yields Odd Result: More Illegals Stay Once-Migrant Mexican Workers Settle in Stockton, Calif.; A Burden for Schools, ER By EDUARDO PORTER Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL STOCKTON, Calif. -- Something unusual is happening among the illegal immigrants who work in the lush fields of the San Joaquin Valley. Instead of leaving after the harvest, as they did for years, they are staying here, settling into lives of poverty and putting new strains on the city. Through jobless winter months, immigrant farmworkers cluster in run-down apartments, sleeping on mattresses, sofas and rugs. In one blue clapboard house on a leafy street near downtown, about 30 immigrant farmworkers from Oxtotitlan, Mexico, pack into three apartments. Most of them aren't going anywhere. "Maybe I'll stay for 10 more years, or 15," says Cristobal Silverio, 42 years old, who lives in one of the apartments with his wife, four young children and half a dozen recent arrivals from his hometown. Stockton's schools have become crowded with Spanish-speaking students. One local charity reports that demand for Christmas food baskets has tripled in the past two years, in large part because Mexican workers no longer go home for the holidays. The county hospital faces a budget crunch as it treats an exploding number of uninsured patients. Stricter policing of the U.S. border -- begun in the 1990s and reinforced in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001 -- was supposed to stem the flood of illegal immigrants arriving in the U.S. Instead, in Stockton and other places, it is having an entirely different effect. Illegal immigrants are still willing to risk crossing the border between the U.S. and Mexico, arriving at a rate of about 400,000 a year, by some estimates. But as the number of border-patrol agents has doubled since 1995, the price of an illegal crossing has roughly tripled to about $1,500 for a three-day trek across the Arizona desert. As a result, many immigrants have cut out much of the back-and-forth travel and decided to stay put in the U.S. The result is a more-permanent unauthorized population than ever before, says Douglas Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at the University of Pennsylvania, who studies surveys of communities in Mexico and the U.S. In the early 1980s, the average stay of an undocumented Mexican worker was three years, Mr. Massey says. By the late 1990s, it climbed to nine years. The California Public Policy Institute reports that only about 11% of the illegal immigrants who arrived in 1998 returned home within a year, down from roughly 30% in 1990. Meanwhile, the percentage of undocumented immigrants who say they plan to stay in the U.S. "as long as possible" jumped from 59% in the mid-1990s to 67% at the end of the decade, according to surveys by the Mexican National Population Council. "The militarization of the border hasn't stopped the people from coming. It just drove up the cost and the risk," says Mr. Massey. "The response of migrants was to stop going home, and the result was a big growth of the Mexican population here." Just as crossing the border has gotten tougher for illegal immigrants, settling here has become easier. Undocumented farmworkers used to exist in a constant state of anxiety, alert for the first sign of an immigration raid. But while security has tightened along the border, it has gone slack in many of the communities where migrants work. "We haven't done workplace enforcement for years," says Robert Logazino, head of the Border Patrol's Northern California sector office in Livermore. "We're in the process of being closed down here." Priorities have shifted in law enforcement. Instead of raiding fields and factories, agents for the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- now folded into the Department of Homeland Security along with the Border Patrol -- are mostly assigned to investigate smuggling rings and patrol high-profile sites such as airports. Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit, says immigration authorities have no definitive numbers on the settlement patterns of the illegal-immigrant population. But she says the pattern of border apprehensions "suggests that [illegal immigrants] are making the decision not to go back and forth as readily as they once did." As permanent populations of unauthorized laborers replace what was once a temporary, mostly male work force, the immigrants are often trapped by poverty. They are also transforming many U.S. communities that used to enjoy the benefits of cheap labor without the problems associated with entrenched communities of low-income workers and their families. The changing migratory pattern is on clear display in Stockton, a city of 244,000. Checkered with sprawling farms that produce apples, pears, tomatoes and more, the San Joaquin Valley is one of the nation's mo
Economics of commodities
Is there an economic subspeciality that studies the dynamics of global raw commodity markets? I'm especially interested in historical studies of agricultural commodities, like coffee & cocoa. Michael
