Remora
Are the hard times over for Burger King? Actually, LI doesn't care. We just wanted to write that sentence, which has a vaguely biz-o-lect sound. Apparently Burger King is suffering the pangs and arrows of outrageous customer dissatisfaction. They've turned against the whopper. Those bastards. Turns out BK is run by a giant British conglomerate -- you never know who owns the toys nowadays -- that also puts out the Smirnoff vodka. The Brits, showing rare good sense, have decided to concentrate on their intoxicant, and find a buyer for the ailing King.
When Limited Inc was a dewy youth, he preferred Burger King to McDonalds and especially to Dairy Queen. The royalty of cheap food -- how it studs the American highways and byways! Basically, LI's preference was swayed by the paper crowns you sometimes got at Burger King. And the shakes. As I remember it, the shakes were better than those plastic-y tasting concoctions you'd get at MacDonalds.
Time has not been kind enough to marry LI off ... Having no children to watch, wide eyed, as the tv shows grotesquely magnified burgers being whisked off grills, thus activating the Pavlovian impulse in the little dears, LI has no reason to return to the foods of yesteryear. Oh, now and then the rare visit to Schlotzky's, but besides that, fast food just isn't in our orbit. Nothing, though, conjures up repulsion like the thought of going into one of those boites and chowing down on the burgers. The LA Times, which has several unintentionally funny stories today (one about a "smear campaign" re Beautiful Mind, accusing the movie of covering up some of the facts about its subject, was particularly amusing -- it quotes Neal Gabler, a Hollywood intellectual whose brain stretches from Variety all the way to the spiritual heights of, say, Alan Toffler -- a giant, in other words, in every way, and a true credit to the industry -- as saying that the campaign, and Russell Crowe's failure to secure an Oscar, was -- well, I must quote the graf:
"I think, in the future, when people are thinking about using biopics, they'll be more cautious on how they use the facts," Gabler said. "I happen to think this is a tragedy. To think we have this new chilling effect. That artists are going to have to be bound by facts. ... Imagine if Shakespeare was bound to the real character in 'Richard III'? If he were alive today, would Shakespeare be called upon to revise that play?"
LI will not gild this lily with comment ), but the BK saga is tops. Here, for your dining and dancing pleasure, are the grafs that particularly amused LI:
"In recent months, Burger King has made its shakes creamier and thicker by adding ice cream. It dressed up the Whopper with larger pieces of lettuce, thicker slices of tomatoes and pickles with a stronger dill flavor.
Mike Aldredge, 36, a Burger King regular for the last 15 years, has noticed the difference. The Costa Mesa resident, who eats at Burger King twice a week, said he liked the new and improved food so much he might easily double his visits.
"This is the best fast food I've ever had," he said, clutching a double Whopper with cheese. "And it's getting better."
However, new products and variety might not be the sales drivers Burger King executives expect. McDonald's much-hyped New Tastes Menu, which rotates new products year-round, has failed to attract hordes of new customers. In a recent national survey, Villa Park restaurant consultant Robert L. Sandelman found fast-food customers ranked cleanliness, taste and food flavor ahead of choice, which placed 11th out of 12 categories."
Question: where did that Mike Aldredge, 36, come from? Was there some kind of casting call? Second question: how much does he weigh? The vision of him, clutching his double whopper with cheese, is going to remain with LI the rest of the day. Sadly enough.
Wednesday, March 27, 2002
Tuesday, March 26, 2002
Dope
Is it only Limited Inc's imagination, or should economists take more of an interest in "small-world" theory, associated with Duncan Watts and Stephen Strogatz?
Yes, my readers roar, in numbers too big to ignore. Read your Watts and Strogantz and sin no more! or something like that.
Well, to explain...
These two wrote a paper a few years ago, in which they tried to find the minimum path length for an undeterminately large network. They called these networks, with their improbably small dimensions, small worlds, after the Milgram experiment that supposedly showed that there are six degrees of separation or less between any two randomly selected people in the world (well, the experiment didn't make a claim that vast, but it has been made since then). The problem, from the perspective of networks, was that most individuals are connected to a cluster of individuals, in which each individual has a high chance of sharing acquaintances. So how do you break out of the cluster to connect to random, unfamiliar individuals? Here's a quote about the system set up by Watts and Duncan from a September, 1998 Physics Today article
"This result is actually quite general," says Watts (who will shortly be moving to the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico), "and does not depend on the choice of a ring substrate used in the model. All that is required to generate the small-world phenomenon is a network that is locally ordered (which means simply that two nodes with a mutual 'friend' are significantly more likely to be connected than two randomly selected nodes), and which has a small fraction of long-range shortcuts. The effect also does not depend on the specific nature of the network nodes or connections--only their topology--so the small-world phenomenon ought to arise in all sorts of large, sparse networks."
To check this, Watts and Strogatz examine the length and clustering properties of three real networks: the collaboration graph of movie actors (including approximately 225 000 actors of all nationalities since the start of motion pictures); the power-transmission grid of the western US; and the neural network of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans (the only organism whose neural network is completely known).
As Watts explains, they show that, in each case, the characteristic path length of the network is close to its theoretical minimum (that of an equivalent random graph), yet the clustering coefficient is far from minimal, indicating the presence of significant local order. So all three networks exhibit the small-world phenomenon. "
There is a book coming out in May from Mark Buchanan, Nexus, that not only explains Watts and Strogatz' work, but expands on it, explaining that Watts and Strogatz had stumbled on one form of small world network, and that there is at least one other possible form of small world network. This other form is related to the principle of "the rich get richer" -- that certain individuals are more connected, and by that very fact will become more connected. There is a network form for the fact that wealth is unequally distributed. Among network people, this is known as preferential attachment.
Now here's the question. One of the big rightwing pushes right now is to promote the idea that poverty in the third world is rather a mirage. Or, if not a mirage, caused by ... as you might have guessed, big government. The idea comes from Hernando de Soto, and it isn't quite as silly as it sounds. In two books he has promoted the idea that small, informal vendors and makers and homeowners need a system that recognizes them as free economic agents with capital. That is, if we strip away the onerous bureaucracy and government thievery, we could unleash, in the third world, value that is already there. This, after all, is partly what happened in the French Revolution. Anybody who reads Le Rouge et le Noir is going to have some sympathy with de Soto's point, because Stendhal is very conscious of the effect of liberalism, ie stripping away big guv and its thievish attachments, on the French landscape.
Is the rightwing idea going against the rule of preferential attachment, or seeding it?
Hernando de Soto is being presented to the American public as some kind of third world guru. The NYTimes magazine, last year, presented him as the answer to our dreams (insofar as our dreams involve giving up none of our stuff and not feeling guilty about it). But the earlier image of de Soto wasn't so heroic. Tina Rosenberg wrote a review of The Other Path in the New Republic, in 1991, that pretty much blasted de Soto as an egomaniac and a crony of Fujimori. Here is what she said about de Soto's grand vision:
"To Reaganites, however, the most marketable aspect of The Other Path is what it does not say. It does not talk about helping small businessmen acquire the infrastructure, technical assistance, or capital they need. It does not propose improving education, health care, or other programs that could get Peru's poor off to a better start in life. It does not address discrimination against Indians, which has shut Peru's poor out of many opportunities. Most informals are one rung above beggars. Redefining them as entrepreneurs doesn't cure what made them poor, especially in an economy that has experienced one of the worst declines in modern history. (The informal sector exploded in part because traditional jobs dried up; only 9 percent of workers in Lima earn a salary they can live on.) Not even legal businesses can get credit. But the book asserts that legal reforms alone will suffice to unlock the informal sector's engine of growth. De Soto compared the state to a dying emergency-room patient and told me, "I want to burn down the hospital."
The burning down the hospital phrase has been toned down, lately, and there is a little bit more heed being paid to infusing capital. There is an organization, Trickle Up, which just announced its association with the ubiquitous De Soto. Trickle Up is dedicated to making micro grants to the third world street neediest. Because it promotes the solid virtues of entrepeneurship and self reliance, Trickle Up has become a favorite for conservatives trying to summon up a little chic compassion.
"Grants are made by TUP to selected groups of five or more people after a business plan is reviewed for them by unpaid TUP project coordinators. The maximum grant is $100, and recipients must pledge to reinvest at least 20 percent of their profits in their businesses. In the past ten years, more than 90,000 individuals have participated, 15,000 businesses have been started in 86 countries, and over $7.5 million in profits have been generated from TUP-funded businesses. All of this has been achieved without the involvement of governments, large staffs, or social researchers. By now, you probably see why it's called the "Trickle Up Program." Funds aren't lavished upon government entities in poor countries with the hope that a small portion will somehow "trickle down" to the very poor. The grants go directly to the cagey entrepreneurs of the streets, including those in Port-au--Prince, Haiti.
Now, LI is fascinated with the project here: can beggars become choosers? It all looks very much like... like the 1966 War on Poverty project. One of the oddities of contemporary conservativism is this adoption of sixties forms, from classical rock to agit-prop. Hmm. In any case, LI is going to go further into this issue, this grassroots wealth issue, in another post soon.
Is it only Limited Inc's imagination, or should economists take more of an interest in "small-world" theory, associated with Duncan Watts and Stephen Strogatz?
Yes, my readers roar, in numbers too big to ignore. Read your Watts and Strogantz and sin no more! or something like that.
Well, to explain...
These two wrote a paper a few years ago, in which they tried to find the minimum path length for an undeterminately large network. They called these networks, with their improbably small dimensions, small worlds, after the Milgram experiment that supposedly showed that there are six degrees of separation or less between any two randomly selected people in the world (well, the experiment didn't make a claim that vast, but it has been made since then). The problem, from the perspective of networks, was that most individuals are connected to a cluster of individuals, in which each individual has a high chance of sharing acquaintances. So how do you break out of the cluster to connect to random, unfamiliar individuals? Here's a quote about the system set up by Watts and Duncan from a September, 1998 Physics Today article
"This result is actually quite general," says Watts (who will shortly be moving to the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico), "and does not depend on the choice of a ring substrate used in the model. All that is required to generate the small-world phenomenon is a network that is locally ordered (which means simply that two nodes with a mutual 'friend' are significantly more likely to be connected than two randomly selected nodes), and which has a small fraction of long-range shortcuts. The effect also does not depend on the specific nature of the network nodes or connections--only their topology--so the small-world phenomenon ought to arise in all sorts of large, sparse networks."
To check this, Watts and Strogatz examine the length and clustering properties of three real networks: the collaboration graph of movie actors (including approximately 225 000 actors of all nationalities since the start of motion pictures); the power-transmission grid of the western US; and the neural network of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans (the only organism whose neural network is completely known).
As Watts explains, they show that, in each case, the characteristic path length of the network is close to its theoretical minimum (that of an equivalent random graph), yet the clustering coefficient is far from minimal, indicating the presence of significant local order. So all three networks exhibit the small-world phenomenon. "
There is a book coming out in May from Mark Buchanan, Nexus, that not only explains Watts and Strogatz' work, but expands on it, explaining that Watts and Strogatz had stumbled on one form of small world network, and that there is at least one other possible form of small world network. This other form is related to the principle of "the rich get richer" -- that certain individuals are more connected, and by that very fact will become more connected. There is a network form for the fact that wealth is unequally distributed. Among network people, this is known as preferential attachment.
Now here's the question. One of the big rightwing pushes right now is to promote the idea that poverty in the third world is rather a mirage. Or, if not a mirage, caused by ... as you might have guessed, big government. The idea comes from Hernando de Soto, and it isn't quite as silly as it sounds. In two books he has promoted the idea that small, informal vendors and makers and homeowners need a system that recognizes them as free economic agents with capital. That is, if we strip away the onerous bureaucracy and government thievery, we could unleash, in the third world, value that is already there. This, after all, is partly what happened in the French Revolution. Anybody who reads Le Rouge et le Noir is going to have some sympathy with de Soto's point, because Stendhal is very conscious of the effect of liberalism, ie stripping away big guv and its thievish attachments, on the French landscape.
Is the rightwing idea going against the rule of preferential attachment, or seeding it?
Hernando de Soto is being presented to the American public as some kind of third world guru. The NYTimes magazine, last year, presented him as the answer to our dreams (insofar as our dreams involve giving up none of our stuff and not feeling guilty about it). But the earlier image of de Soto wasn't so heroic. Tina Rosenberg wrote a review of The Other Path in the New Republic, in 1991, that pretty much blasted de Soto as an egomaniac and a crony of Fujimori. Here is what she said about de Soto's grand vision:
"To Reaganites, however, the most marketable aspect of The Other Path is what it does not say. It does not talk about helping small businessmen acquire the infrastructure, technical assistance, or capital they need. It does not propose improving education, health care, or other programs that could get Peru's poor off to a better start in life. It does not address discrimination against Indians, which has shut Peru's poor out of many opportunities. Most informals are one rung above beggars. Redefining them as entrepreneurs doesn't cure what made them poor, especially in an economy that has experienced one of the worst declines in modern history. (The informal sector exploded in part because traditional jobs dried up; only 9 percent of workers in Lima earn a salary they can live on.) Not even legal businesses can get credit. But the book asserts that legal reforms alone will suffice to unlock the informal sector's engine of growth. De Soto compared the state to a dying emergency-room patient and told me, "I want to burn down the hospital."
The burning down the hospital phrase has been toned down, lately, and there is a little bit more heed being paid to infusing capital. There is an organization, Trickle Up, which just announced its association with the ubiquitous De Soto. Trickle Up is dedicated to making micro grants to the third world street neediest. Because it promotes the solid virtues of entrepeneurship and self reliance, Trickle Up has become a favorite for conservatives trying to summon up a little chic compassion.
"Grants are made by TUP to selected groups of five or more people after a business plan is reviewed for them by unpaid TUP project coordinators. The maximum grant is $100, and recipients must pledge to reinvest at least 20 percent of their profits in their businesses. In the past ten years, more than 90,000 individuals have participated, 15,000 businesses have been started in 86 countries, and over $7.5 million in profits have been generated from TUP-funded businesses. All of this has been achieved without the involvement of governments, large staffs, or social researchers. By now, you probably see why it's called the "Trickle Up Program." Funds aren't lavished upon government entities in poor countries with the hope that a small portion will somehow "trickle down" to the very poor. The grants go directly to the cagey entrepreneurs of the streets, including those in Port-au--Prince, Haiti.
Now, LI is fascinated with the project here: can beggars become choosers? It all looks very much like... like the 1966 War on Poverty project. One of the oddities of contemporary conservativism is this adoption of sixties forms, from classical rock to agit-prop. Hmm. In any case, LI is going to go further into this issue, this grassroots wealth issue, in another post soon.
Sunday, March 24, 2002
Remora
William Easterly. As in, who is William Easterly?
Right now, Easterly is on the screen as the World Bank economist who came in from the cold. He's written a book that points out (for those who haven't seen it) that the World Bank has failed to stave off poverty in the third world. He's being touted in conservative circles as the man who wants to cut aid, and make those third world slacker nations pay their debts on time. His article in Foreign Policy, which supposedly got him in dutch with his bosses (along with the book that came out of it, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics) is about the second of those two concerns. In it, he makes three of claims:
1. That debt relief is already happening, and in fact has been inscribed in the world system since the early eighties.
2. That the refusal of a nation that has a legitimate "democratic" government to pay back debts incurred by previous military or corrupt governments is a perverse incentive, insofar as the money loaned, at the same time, to "good governments" must be paid back. In effect, we are rewarding bad behavior.
3. That making debt relief conditional on a nation's having a democratic government, or the beginnings of a civil society, creates incentives to make the World Bank and the international lender entities more, rather than less, intrusive in the internal affairs of third world countries.
Now about these claims. Readers know that LI loves nothing better than setting up claims, like ninepins, and bowling them over. Arguing in the oxygen tent -- we take up all the air, you get the fun result.
But seriously, folks. All three of the claims are actually valid only insofar as debt relief is viewed from one side only: that is, from the side of the debtors. Take point 2. To claim that debt relief will send a perverse incentive, insofar as it will tip the parity between the debts of good nations and of 'bad" nations to the side of bad nations, is to ignore the disincentive sent to lender agencies if, in fact, the debts of military dictatorships and the like are voided. The perverse incentives in place, pace Easterly, have really been the other way: given the lack of discussion, or the lack of the organs necessary for discussion, in a military dictatorship, in fact lending agencies have a perverse incentive to loan to these nations. They can better negotiate terms with juntas than with democratically elected governments, and they can better envision the objectives of those loans -- say some unnecessary dam -- rather than the other type of loans -- a medical infrastructure, say. Meanwhile, there is, as we all know, an immense system of kickbacks in place, a system Easterly doesn't even touch on. Take Nigeria. We know that the loans that went to the rebarbative Abacha government. Here's a press release from, of all places, the American embassy to Nigeria:
"Jack A. Blum, an attorney who specializes in controlling bank fraud, government corruption and money laundering, said May 25 that "solving" Nigeria's long-term debt and corruption problem "will take a lot more than conferences on civil society and how to make people more honest."
To solve the problem, he told the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy in the U.S. House of Representatives, "You have to bring criminal justice and recovery of money into play. That is absolutely essential." That, he said, means "getting at the proceeds of corruption, going after the billions (thousands of millions of dollars) that (Former Nigerian Head of State, General Sani) Abacha took and the billions more that prior governments looted from the country."
Blum, who was called to testify on the Nigerian debt and corruption situation, said "Many of those people (who took those public funds) are sitting in London as some of the wealthiest people in England. Those assets cannot be overlooked.... Four billion (four thousand million dollars) with Abacha, $40 billion ($40,000 million) at least since independence," with some estimates running as high as $90 billion."
As a matter of fact, LI has talked to Jack Blum about this issue. We did a piece on money laundering for a magazine, the Globalist, which went funny on us and never paid for the piece. Blum's point is that the experience of Nigeria has been repeated over and over again. It isn't just that a place like Nigeria doesn't have infrastructural projects supposedly justifying the loans that were earmarked for them -- it is that the lending agencies knew, even as they were making the loans, that a significant portion of the money was being kicked back to the West, in the form of transfers to Western banks.
This is an area Easterly, supposedly the boldest and the baddest economist ever to walk away from the World Bank, doesn't even discuss.
Since his book was published eight months ago, one might wonder why he is being profiled, now, in the press. The reason is, he is dear to the Bush administration's heart, endorsing their position on foreign aid. Here are two grafs from his profile in the Washington Post:
"From 1988 to 2001, he was senior adviser to the World Bank's Development Research Group, the in-house brain trust charged with gauging the success or failure of the bank's development efforts around the world. In the process, he's trekked through slums from Karachi to Cairo and wears the good-humored but weary resignation of a lifetime idealist mugged at last by reality.
"He rejects the notion that he's any kind of whistle-blower. He still believes in both the World Bank ("there are a lot of really smart, really committed people there") and aid to developing nations, which he would like to see increased from the current level of $56 billion. In fact, foreign aid has been declining in recent years after peaking at $64 billion in 1991. Although private capital has taken up some of that slack, Wolfensohn has been calling for a $10 billion increase from the bank's member countries in each of the next five years."
Get the "mugged by reality line" -- was it William Krystal who said a neo-conservative was a liberal mugged by reality? Reality, you can be sure, is operating behind this metaphor in a very sooty skin. The American dilemma is, as it has always been, that no matter how elevated the supposed issue of the debate, it is always just one step away from a minstrel show. LI is infinitely depressed about that.
William Easterly. As in, who is William Easterly?
Right now, Easterly is on the screen as the World Bank economist who came in from the cold. He's written a book that points out (for those who haven't seen it) that the World Bank has failed to stave off poverty in the third world. He's being touted in conservative circles as the man who wants to cut aid, and make those third world slacker nations pay their debts on time. His article in Foreign Policy, which supposedly got him in dutch with his bosses (along with the book that came out of it, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics) is about the second of those two concerns. In it, he makes three of claims:
1. That debt relief is already happening, and in fact has been inscribed in the world system since the early eighties.
2. That the refusal of a nation that has a legitimate "democratic" government to pay back debts incurred by previous military or corrupt governments is a perverse incentive, insofar as the money loaned, at the same time, to "good governments" must be paid back. In effect, we are rewarding bad behavior.
3. That making debt relief conditional on a nation's having a democratic government, or the beginnings of a civil society, creates incentives to make the World Bank and the international lender entities more, rather than less, intrusive in the internal affairs of third world countries.
Now about these claims. Readers know that LI loves nothing better than setting up claims, like ninepins, and bowling them over. Arguing in the oxygen tent -- we take up all the air, you get the fun result.
But seriously, folks. All three of the claims are actually valid only insofar as debt relief is viewed from one side only: that is, from the side of the debtors. Take point 2. To claim that debt relief will send a perverse incentive, insofar as it will tip the parity between the debts of good nations and of 'bad" nations to the side of bad nations, is to ignore the disincentive sent to lender agencies if, in fact, the debts of military dictatorships and the like are voided. The perverse incentives in place, pace Easterly, have really been the other way: given the lack of discussion, or the lack of the organs necessary for discussion, in a military dictatorship, in fact lending agencies have a perverse incentive to loan to these nations. They can better negotiate terms with juntas than with democratically elected governments, and they can better envision the objectives of those loans -- say some unnecessary dam -- rather than the other type of loans -- a medical infrastructure, say. Meanwhile, there is, as we all know, an immense system of kickbacks in place, a system Easterly doesn't even touch on. Take Nigeria. We know that the loans that went to the rebarbative Abacha government. Here's a press release from, of all places, the American embassy to Nigeria:
"Jack A. Blum, an attorney who specializes in controlling bank fraud, government corruption and money laundering, said May 25 that "solving" Nigeria's long-term debt and corruption problem "will take a lot more than conferences on civil society and how to make people more honest."
To solve the problem, he told the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy in the U.S. House of Representatives, "You have to bring criminal justice and recovery of money into play. That is absolutely essential." That, he said, means "getting at the proceeds of corruption, going after the billions (thousands of millions of dollars) that (Former Nigerian Head of State, General Sani) Abacha took and the billions more that prior governments looted from the country."
Blum, who was called to testify on the Nigerian debt and corruption situation, said "Many of those people (who took those public funds) are sitting in London as some of the wealthiest people in England. Those assets cannot be overlooked.... Four billion (four thousand million dollars) with Abacha, $40 billion ($40,000 million) at least since independence," with some estimates running as high as $90 billion."
As a matter of fact, LI has talked to Jack Blum about this issue. We did a piece on money laundering for a magazine, the Globalist, which went funny on us and never paid for the piece. Blum's point is that the experience of Nigeria has been repeated over and over again. It isn't just that a place like Nigeria doesn't have infrastructural projects supposedly justifying the loans that were earmarked for them -- it is that the lending agencies knew, even as they were making the loans, that a significant portion of the money was being kicked back to the West, in the form of transfers to Western banks.
This is an area Easterly, supposedly the boldest and the baddest economist ever to walk away from the World Bank, doesn't even discuss.
Since his book was published eight months ago, one might wonder why he is being profiled, now, in the press. The reason is, he is dear to the Bush administration's heart, endorsing their position on foreign aid. Here are two grafs from his profile in the Washington Post:
"From 1988 to 2001, he was senior adviser to the World Bank's Development Research Group, the in-house brain trust charged with gauging the success or failure of the bank's development efforts around the world. In the process, he's trekked through slums from Karachi to Cairo and wears the good-humored but weary resignation of a lifetime idealist mugged at last by reality.
"He rejects the notion that he's any kind of whistle-blower. He still believes in both the World Bank ("there are a lot of really smart, really committed people there") and aid to developing nations, which he would like to see increased from the current level of $56 billion. In fact, foreign aid has been declining in recent years after peaking at $64 billion in 1991. Although private capital has taken up some of that slack, Wolfensohn has been calling for a $10 billion increase from the bank's member countries in each of the next five years."
Get the "mugged by reality line" -- was it William Krystal who said a neo-conservative was a liberal mugged by reality? Reality, you can be sure, is operating behind this metaphor in a very sooty skin. The American dilemma is, as it has always been, that no matter how elevated the supposed issue of the debate, it is always just one step away from a minstrel show. LI is infinitely depressed about that.
Remora
The romantic hero degenerates into a mere bundle of boorshness in Dostoevsky's Pere Karamazov. Having gone through the Byronic geste of having no limits, Pere Karamazov really does live without limits -- except those fears generated by the police and superstition. We thought of that dissolute father of four, today, reading another story about the ideological and fiscal corruption of the Bush administration -- surely, Bush is ushering in the age of Gall, the age of limitless affronts to democracy, honesty, and good taste. Pere Karamazov was moved to act by his capacity for lust. Dick Cheney is moved to act by his taste for collusion, something that develops in those who find positions in the higher echelons of the power industry. The story in the NYT, today about Exelon Corporation (Ex-es and En-s are seemingly Texas Greek), the controller of 20% of the nuclear power in this country, details how by a gosh almighty fortuitous circumstance, the Bush folk and Exelon's management rehabilitated of one of their dead in the water schemes to get nuke power rolling again. The age of Gall is particularly galling because it is presided over by a man who, every day and in every way, demonstrates the wisdom of the American people in not electing him. Exelon, according to the Times, cast its bread on the Republican waters, and just as in the Bible, got back threefold. Cheney for reasons that have to be protected by executive privilege saw pebble bed reactors as worthy recipients fo American bucks. And guess what? Exelon has the world monopoly on pebble bed reactors. Wow, is that lucky or what?
Is LI being unfari? Exelon has an explanation:
"Don Kirchoffner, a spokesman for Exelon, said campaign contributions had nothing to do with the pebble-bed reactor's mention in the report. "We didn't influence anybody," Mr. Kirchoffner said. For Exelon, the paragraph [in Cheney's report, extolling pebble bed nuke reactors] was seen as "a good thing," Mr. Kirchoffner said, but he insisted that the mention of the reactor's design did not necessarily represent a boon for the corporation.
"A good thing for the industry and the country was the fact that the administration came out with a recommendation for new forms of nuclear power, and our pebble-bed modular reactor is a byproduct of that," Mr. Kirchoffner said. "We just happened to have it. They took a look at what we gave them and they said this kind of makes sense."
Exelon owns and operates about 20 percent of the nation's nuclear capacity. Its co-chief executives, John W. Rowe and Corbin A. McNeill Jr., who has since retired, were among a group of about 75 energy executives who met with Mr. Cheney in March 2001. Along with other participants of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group, Mr. McNeill also met that month with Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategist, and Lawrence B. Lindsey, the president's top economic adviser. "
However, far be it from LI to suspect that the half a million diverted into Republican pockets by Kirchoffner's employer had anything to do with the Cheney report. While companies are expected to cough up the dough in our pirate democracy, still, let's get real. These are people who have to restrain themselves from recommending nuke reactors in all the national parks. These are people who itch to see the global climate raised just to see if they can do it. Hell, buy a bunch of a/c stock and you are sitting pretty. This was a decision in line with the century long conservative policy of socialism for the rich -- especially if the rich have reactors. Cindy Folkers of the Nuclear information and resources service has produced a nice comparison of our government investment in different energy technologies. There is a canard that is sometimes heard on the WSJ editorial page -- which is where canard come home to roost -- that somehow, the energy biz was forced by the government to fork over incredible billions to create worthless green energy sources, like ethanol. But that isn't the truth. The truth is, nuke money comes from the government, goes into the energy industry, and in return the industry builds vast, costly behemoths that reinforce a dying grid idea -- that power will be generated from these expensive hubs and that end users will simply, passively recieve it. So here is what happens on the subsidy scene when the pretence is made that deregulation is going to give us consumer choice. There is this thing called stranded costs. These costs are for things like, well, pebble bed nuke plants. Stranded as in help me, I'm an old energy company too weak to get up myself. And our compassion is poured out upon them -- part of the deal of deregulation is taxpayers doling out sums to power companies of up to 25 billion dollars, in the case of California, for all that overbuilding, or ill planned building, they did in the seventies, eighties and nineties. It is only fair, of course. As in fair return on investment, the only justice Bush's people seem to recognize. It is interesting -- the conservative outcry about restitution that is owed to black americans for slavery is now standard boilerplate on the chicken wing circuit, but there's an awful lot of silence about the restitution owed to energy companies. The one isn't real, the other is all too real. So guess which one gets discussed most on the talk radio shows?
Anyway, thus speaks Folkers:
When comparing U.S. government subsidies for nuclear, solar, and wind, the nuclear power industry has received the majority (96.3%) of $150 billion in investments since 1947; that�s $145 billion for nuclear reactors and $5 billion for wind and solar. Nuclear subsidies have cost the average household a total amount of $1,411 [1998 dollars] compared to $11 for wind. The more money we spend on nuclear power, the less greenhouse gas reduction benefit we receive, while we hurt sustainable technology investment.
The romantic hero degenerates into a mere bundle of boorshness in Dostoevsky's Pere Karamazov. Having gone through the Byronic geste of having no limits, Pere Karamazov really does live without limits -- except those fears generated by the police and superstition. We thought of that dissolute father of four, today, reading another story about the ideological and fiscal corruption of the Bush administration -- surely, Bush is ushering in the age of Gall, the age of limitless affronts to democracy, honesty, and good taste. Pere Karamazov was moved to act by his capacity for lust. Dick Cheney is moved to act by his taste for collusion, something that develops in those who find positions in the higher echelons of the power industry. The story in the NYT, today about Exelon Corporation (Ex-es and En-s are seemingly Texas Greek), the controller of 20% of the nuclear power in this country, details how by a gosh almighty fortuitous circumstance, the Bush folk and Exelon's management rehabilitated of one of their dead in the water schemes to get nuke power rolling again. The age of Gall is particularly galling because it is presided over by a man who, every day and in every way, demonstrates the wisdom of the American people in not electing him. Exelon, according to the Times, cast its bread on the Republican waters, and just as in the Bible, got back threefold. Cheney for reasons that have to be protected by executive privilege saw pebble bed reactors as worthy recipients fo American bucks. And guess what? Exelon has the world monopoly on pebble bed reactors. Wow, is that lucky or what?
Is LI being unfari? Exelon has an explanation:
"Don Kirchoffner, a spokesman for Exelon, said campaign contributions had nothing to do with the pebble-bed reactor's mention in the report. "We didn't influence anybody," Mr. Kirchoffner said. For Exelon, the paragraph [in Cheney's report, extolling pebble bed nuke reactors] was seen as "a good thing," Mr. Kirchoffner said, but he insisted that the mention of the reactor's design did not necessarily represent a boon for the corporation.
"A good thing for the industry and the country was the fact that the administration came out with a recommendation for new forms of nuclear power, and our pebble-bed modular reactor is a byproduct of that," Mr. Kirchoffner said. "We just happened to have it. They took a look at what we gave them and they said this kind of makes sense."
Exelon owns and operates about 20 percent of the nation's nuclear capacity. Its co-chief executives, John W. Rowe and Corbin A. McNeill Jr., who has since retired, were among a group of about 75 energy executives who met with Mr. Cheney in March 2001. Along with other participants of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group, Mr. McNeill also met that month with Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategist, and Lawrence B. Lindsey, the president's top economic adviser. "
However, far be it from LI to suspect that the half a million diverted into Republican pockets by Kirchoffner's employer had anything to do with the Cheney report. While companies are expected to cough up the dough in our pirate democracy, still, let's get real. These are people who have to restrain themselves from recommending nuke reactors in all the national parks. These are people who itch to see the global climate raised just to see if they can do it. Hell, buy a bunch of a/c stock and you are sitting pretty. This was a decision in line with the century long conservative policy of socialism for the rich -- especially if the rich have reactors. Cindy Folkers of the Nuclear information and resources service has produced a nice comparison of our government investment in different energy technologies. There is a canard that is sometimes heard on the WSJ editorial page -- which is where canard come home to roost -- that somehow, the energy biz was forced by the government to fork over incredible billions to create worthless green energy sources, like ethanol. But that isn't the truth. The truth is, nuke money comes from the government, goes into the energy industry, and in return the industry builds vast, costly behemoths that reinforce a dying grid idea -- that power will be generated from these expensive hubs and that end users will simply, passively recieve it. So here is what happens on the subsidy scene when the pretence is made that deregulation is going to give us consumer choice. There is this thing called stranded costs. These costs are for things like, well, pebble bed nuke plants. Stranded as in help me, I'm an old energy company too weak to get up myself. And our compassion is poured out upon them -- part of the deal of deregulation is taxpayers doling out sums to power companies of up to 25 billion dollars, in the case of California, for all that overbuilding, or ill planned building, they did in the seventies, eighties and nineties. It is only fair, of course. As in fair return on investment, the only justice Bush's people seem to recognize. It is interesting -- the conservative outcry about restitution that is owed to black americans for slavery is now standard boilerplate on the chicken wing circuit, but there's an awful lot of silence about the restitution owed to energy companies. The one isn't real, the other is all too real. So guess which one gets discussed most on the talk radio shows?
Anyway, thus speaks Folkers:
When comparing U.S. government subsidies for nuclear, solar, and wind, the nuclear power industry has received the majority (96.3%) of $150 billion in investments since 1947; that�s $145 billion for nuclear reactors and $5 billion for wind and solar. Nuclear subsidies have cost the average household a total amount of $1,411 [1998 dollars] compared to $11 for wind. The more money we spend on nuclear power, the less greenhouse gas reduction benefit we receive, while we hurt sustainable technology investment.
Friday, March 22, 2002
Remora
James Kenneth Galbraith � the Galbraiths are our favorite dynasty, much superior to the Kennedys and the Bushies � has a nice article in Daedalus entitled A perfect crime: Inequality in the age of globalization. Unfortunately, the article isn�t available on the web, but here are Galbraith�s points:
1. An old view of development and income inequality held that there was a archetypal pattern
that applied to developing economies, in which a primitive stage of industrialization would correspond to an increase in income inequality, which would then begin to level out as the
economy matured.
2. This view was disputed in the eighties and nineties, and displaced by a cultural view, which
held that one should concentrate on land holding, the level of protectionism, the willingness to sacrifice for an advantageous export position, and so on.
3. Galbraith gives us evidence to think that the older view is more realistic. Furthermore, he
holds that the increase in global income inequality since 1982 has not been the effect of the mystical machinery of globalisation, where the allocation of manufacturing effected by the magic invisible hand and the temporary availability of cheap labor � temporary in the historic sense, stretching over a generation or century or two - in diverse locales organizes itself spontaneously. His idea is that the Keynesian system fell apart on the backs of the poor. Here is
the core of his piece:
�Global inequality fell in the late 1970s. In those years, poor countries had the benefit of low interest rates and easy credit, and high commodity prices, especially for oil. Indeed, in the 1970s,
the UTIP [the University of Texas Inequality Project, headed by Galbraith -- LI] data shows that it was the lower-income workers in the poorer countries who made the largest gains in pay. But
in 1980--1981, the age of low interest rates and high commodity prices ended. In 1982, the repression took hold - a financial repression, to be sure, but not less real for having taken that form. And while the debt crisis was not accompanied by overt violence -- coups are,
indeed, often very limited in their overt violence --the effects were soon felt worldwide, and with a savage intensity that has continued for two decades. In sum, it is not increasing trade as such that we should fear. Nor is technology the culprit. To focus on "globalization" as such misstates
the issue. The problem is a process of integration carried out since at least 1980 under circumstances of unsustainable finance, in which wealth has flowed upwards from the poor
countries to the rich, and mainly to the upper financial strata of the richest countries. In the course of these events, progress toward tolerable levels of inequality and sustainable development virtually stopped. Neocolonial patterns of center-periphery dependence, and of debt peonage, were reestablished, but without the slightest assumption of responsibility by the rich countries for the fate of the poor.
It has been, it would appear, a perfect crime...�
Limited Inc should point out that there are some problems with Galbraith�s thesis. The major
one is that, as he admits, it does not account for China and India � a huge exception. But as a general thesis about the background dynamic of our present state of things, I�ll buy it.
So it is with the hauteur characteristic of inhaling theory that we read today�s NYT story about the coy corporate use of tax havens to cut down on their oh so substantial burdens. Senator Baucus and Senator Grasseley from Iowa have been tut tutting over Stanley Works decision to
�relocate� spiritually in the Bahamas � a shift in citizenship that costs the company nothing, but is a considerable tax savings. The Senators are even proposing doing away with this tax haven business. Horrors. Government interference with business once again! Here�s a couple of grafs:
�Gerard J. Gould, a Stanley Works vice president, said he had not known about the hearing. The company, he said, "feels there is nothing unpatriotic about following existing law and reinvesting the tax savings to grow the company for all of its shareholders."
In a statement, Ingersoll-Rand said, "Our move to Bermuda was approved by our shareholders, was a taxable transaction and is consistent with U.S. laws."
"We believe that upon further analysis, the committee will conclude that aspects of the U.S. tax law drive U.S. companies to change their place of incorporation in order to compete on a level playing field with international peers," it added.
Ingersoll-Rand�s idea, apparently, is that the tax rate should go down to, what? Rather like King Lear�s daughter: �What need you five and twenty, ten, or five� percent? There�s a Business Week story from March 4th that gives reports a study of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that found that �52 of the 250 biggest U.S. companies paid effective tax rates of 10% or less in 1998.� Indeed, there�s competitiveness for ya! But as the Repugs in the House will suggest, their mouths full of steak, this is just too great a burden for the wealthy to bear! And of course Dumbo, the commander in chief, will march off in that general direction.
So it goes on the tax front.
James Kenneth Galbraith � the Galbraiths are our favorite dynasty, much superior to the Kennedys and the Bushies � has a nice article in Daedalus entitled A perfect crime: Inequality in the age of globalization. Unfortunately, the article isn�t available on the web, but here are Galbraith�s points:
1. An old view of development and income inequality held that there was a archetypal pattern
that applied to developing economies, in which a primitive stage of industrialization would correspond to an increase in income inequality, which would then begin to level out as the
economy matured.
2. This view was disputed in the eighties and nineties, and displaced by a cultural view, which
held that one should concentrate on land holding, the level of protectionism, the willingness to sacrifice for an advantageous export position, and so on.
3. Galbraith gives us evidence to think that the older view is more realistic. Furthermore, he
holds that the increase in global income inequality since 1982 has not been the effect of the mystical machinery of globalisation, where the allocation of manufacturing effected by the magic invisible hand and the temporary availability of cheap labor � temporary in the historic sense, stretching over a generation or century or two - in diverse locales organizes itself spontaneously. His idea is that the Keynesian system fell apart on the backs of the poor. Here is
the core of his piece:
�Global inequality fell in the late 1970s. In those years, poor countries had the benefit of low interest rates and easy credit, and high commodity prices, especially for oil. Indeed, in the 1970s,
the UTIP [the University of Texas Inequality Project, headed by Galbraith -- LI] data shows that it was the lower-income workers in the poorer countries who made the largest gains in pay. But
in 1980--1981, the age of low interest rates and high commodity prices ended. In 1982, the repression took hold - a financial repression, to be sure, but not less real for having taken that form. And while the debt crisis was not accompanied by overt violence -- coups are,
indeed, often very limited in their overt violence --the effects were soon felt worldwide, and with a savage intensity that has continued for two decades. In sum, it is not increasing trade as such that we should fear. Nor is technology the culprit. To focus on "globalization" as such misstates
the issue. The problem is a process of integration carried out since at least 1980 under circumstances of unsustainable finance, in which wealth has flowed upwards from the poor
countries to the rich, and mainly to the upper financial strata of the richest countries. In the course of these events, progress toward tolerable levels of inequality and sustainable development virtually stopped. Neocolonial patterns of center-periphery dependence, and of debt peonage, were reestablished, but without the slightest assumption of responsibility by the rich countries for the fate of the poor.
It has been, it would appear, a perfect crime...�
Limited Inc should point out that there are some problems with Galbraith�s thesis. The major
one is that, as he admits, it does not account for China and India � a huge exception. But as a general thesis about the background dynamic of our present state of things, I�ll buy it.
So it is with the hauteur characteristic of inhaling theory that we read today�s NYT story about the coy corporate use of tax havens to cut down on their oh so substantial burdens. Senator Baucus and Senator Grasseley from Iowa have been tut tutting over Stanley Works decision to
�relocate� spiritually in the Bahamas � a shift in citizenship that costs the company nothing, but is a considerable tax savings. The Senators are even proposing doing away with this tax haven business. Horrors. Government interference with business once again! Here�s a couple of grafs:
�Gerard J. Gould, a Stanley Works vice president, said he had not known about the hearing. The company, he said, "feels there is nothing unpatriotic about following existing law and reinvesting the tax savings to grow the company for all of its shareholders."
In a statement, Ingersoll-Rand said, "Our move to Bermuda was approved by our shareholders, was a taxable transaction and is consistent with U.S. laws."
"We believe that upon further analysis, the committee will conclude that aspects of the U.S. tax law drive U.S. companies to change their place of incorporation in order to compete on a level playing field with international peers," it added.
Ingersoll-Rand�s idea, apparently, is that the tax rate should go down to, what? Rather like King Lear�s daughter: �What need you five and twenty, ten, or five� percent? There�s a Business Week story from March 4th that gives reports a study of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that found that �52 of the 250 biggest U.S. companies paid effective tax rates of 10% or less in 1998.� Indeed, there�s competitiveness for ya! But as the Repugs in the House will suggest, their mouths full of steak, this is just too great a burden for the wealthy to bear! And of course Dumbo, the commander in chief, will march off in that general direction.
So it goes on the tax front.
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Dope
The Odd, Old decencies
Lefty nostalgia always makes Limited Inc nervous. It makes sense that it is rampant: another defeated ideology compensating for losing the future by claiming the past. Alas, these consolation prizes don't bring much comfort. That said, I am as wet eyed about the world we've lost as any old Wobbly. I've been reading Richard Lourie's biography of Andrei Sakharov for a review, and I was struck by one passage. When Sakharov met Brezhnev, who was, at that time, the Commisar for military research, Brezhnev told him a story. In his father's opinion, Brezhnev said, the people who invented new weapons should be hung from gallows on hills, pour encourager les autres. Brezhnev, of course, didn't follow his Dad's advice.
Still, Brezhnev's daddy was just displaying sans culottes common sense, if you ask LI. The feeling of a value beyond the value of political or economic power -- well, it dies a little every day. But we still catch glimmerings of it in the damnedest places.
Which leads us, by a cerebral by-way that might not be entirely clear to the rest of you, to today's news about Avon. It seems that they are firing 3500 people. These people are the packers in their plant. They aren't the Avon ladies themselves, who number, worldwide, something like 3.4 million people. To each of whom, when the order is written up, an individual package is sent off. WNET did a nice piece about Avon a while back, calling it the Company of Woman. I particularly liked the quote from Andrea Jung:
For all the effort Avon is putting into the U.S., the most dynamic growth is taking place overseas. Jung claims, "One of our fastest-growing regions of the world has been the entire Eastern European region. We've grown at 43 percent in dollars compounded over the last several years, with 45 percent more reps every year. We call it Avon heaven. Down the road I think China's an enormous opportunity."
I know all about Avon Heaven, since my mother and grandmother were part of the Avon work force. Sobel, in his history of the Great Boom, as he calls the last fifty years in America, rightly points out that the effect of franchising in American culture hasn't really been publicized. It isn't just the potential owners of small shops who took, instead, the franchising route, but also housewives, or in my Mom's case secretaries, retirees -- the great American muddle. My grandmother persevered long after my Mom had abandoned Avon heaven. So my memories of her, my grandma, are fused with the sickly sweet smell of Avon perfumes, or the sheer wierdness of soap on a rope. My grandmother was a connector because of these products.
The Avon Lady reversed the old trope of the travelling salesman, his bibles or cleaning products in his briefcase, his penis some fabulous cuckolding engine. Yes, in the old days we were all just a doorbell away from a dirty joke. In place of that mythology, the Avon Lady instantiated another one: that of the harem. Briefly, all too briefly, the split level suburban ranch (2 ba, 3br, covered garage) was transfigured into some female tropic.
And, not incidentally, my grandmother earned enough to handsomely supplement the inadequate pension her husband received from Smith Corona.
It has to be remembered about capitalism: it is a way of life. It also has to be remembered that, just like the revolutionary tribunals that accompanied its birth in the West, capitalism is very prone to irrational capital punishment, condemning ways of life to sudden extinction, eroding our sense that any way of life is grounded, or an intrinsically good thing. Human nature at its finest, the economist says. MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN, as Adam Smith once said. I don't know. I'd like to consult Leonid Brezhnev's daddy on the question.
The Odd, Old decencies
Lefty nostalgia always makes Limited Inc nervous. It makes sense that it is rampant: another defeated ideology compensating for losing the future by claiming the past. Alas, these consolation prizes don't bring much comfort. That said, I am as wet eyed about the world we've lost as any old Wobbly. I've been reading Richard Lourie's biography of Andrei Sakharov for a review, and I was struck by one passage. When Sakharov met Brezhnev, who was, at that time, the Commisar for military research, Brezhnev told him a story. In his father's opinion, Brezhnev said, the people who invented new weapons should be hung from gallows on hills, pour encourager les autres. Brezhnev, of course, didn't follow his Dad's advice.
Still, Brezhnev's daddy was just displaying sans culottes common sense, if you ask LI. The feeling of a value beyond the value of political or economic power -- well, it dies a little every day. But we still catch glimmerings of it in the damnedest places.
Which leads us, by a cerebral by-way that might not be entirely clear to the rest of you, to today's news about Avon. It seems that they are firing 3500 people. These people are the packers in their plant. They aren't the Avon ladies themselves, who number, worldwide, something like 3.4 million people. To each of whom, when the order is written up, an individual package is sent off. WNET did a nice piece about Avon a while back, calling it the Company of Woman. I particularly liked the quote from Andrea Jung:
For all the effort Avon is putting into the U.S., the most dynamic growth is taking place overseas. Jung claims, "One of our fastest-growing regions of the world has been the entire Eastern European region. We've grown at 43 percent in dollars compounded over the last several years, with 45 percent more reps every year. We call it Avon heaven. Down the road I think China's an enormous opportunity."
I know all about Avon Heaven, since my mother and grandmother were part of the Avon work force. Sobel, in his history of the Great Boom, as he calls the last fifty years in America, rightly points out that the effect of franchising in American culture hasn't really been publicized. It isn't just the potential owners of small shops who took, instead, the franchising route, but also housewives, or in my Mom's case secretaries, retirees -- the great American muddle. My grandmother persevered long after my Mom had abandoned Avon heaven. So my memories of her, my grandma, are fused with the sickly sweet smell of Avon perfumes, or the sheer wierdness of soap on a rope. My grandmother was a connector because of these products.
The Avon Lady reversed the old trope of the travelling salesman, his bibles or cleaning products in his briefcase, his penis some fabulous cuckolding engine. Yes, in the old days we were all just a doorbell away from a dirty joke. In place of that mythology, the Avon Lady instantiated another one: that of the harem. Briefly, all too briefly, the split level suburban ranch (2 ba, 3br, covered garage) was transfigured into some female tropic.
And, not incidentally, my grandmother earned enough to handsomely supplement the inadequate pension her husband received from Smith Corona.
It has to be remembered about capitalism: it is a way of life. It also has to be remembered that, just like the revolutionary tribunals that accompanied its birth in the West, capitalism is very prone to irrational capital punishment, condemning ways of life to sudden extinction, eroding our sense that any way of life is grounded, or an intrinsically good thing. Human nature at its finest, the economist says. MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN, as Adam Smith once said. I don't know. I'd like to consult Leonid Brezhnev's daddy on the question.
Monday, March 18, 2002
Remora
The fight about Intellectual Property goes on. Listen to the shots outside your window in the lonely night, listen to the sirens coming closer. Converts to the Open source idea, which is also the idea of the commons, come out of their closets, in the business world, are attacked, and then go back in. One such is the Michael Capellas, CEO of Compaq, who made a slip the other day. He was speaking before a biotech conference in Boston. Here's a couple of grafs from the Globe report: "The hundreds of biotech executives and venture capitalists at yesterday's conference hope to make immense profits by turning that processed data into salable products. Some aim to do this by obtaining patents on genetic information that they discover along the way. But this is a controversial idea, with some critics arguing that because genes are a part of nature, businesses shouldn't be able to own them.
In a comment that stunned the audience into several seconds of silence, Capellas responded to a question on the issue by flatly saying that companies shouldn't be able to patent genes. But he quickly backed away from the comment, pleading ignorance of all the ramifications of the issue. ''If you're asking me what should be patentable,'' Capellas said, ''I don't know.''
In a later telephone interview, Capellas stressed that companies had a right to control their scientific discoveries. ''I absolutely believe that the intellectual property must be protected,'' he said. Original processes and products growing out of genetic research should definitely be subject to patent protection, he said.But he repeated his concern that patent law might not be the best way to deal with basic genetic information. ''I'm not sure if the best way you do that is taking individual components and patenting them,'' Capellas said. ''That process doesn't lend itself well to this new world of bioinformatics.''
Catch that explanation of open source resistance: since genes are "a part of nature,' businesses shouldn't be able to own them. There are, as my puss-in-boots readers will know (oh you heady slicers and dicers of the dialectic!)
two major problems with that sentence. The first is that opposition is based on businesses 'owning nature." If a business exists, it is going to own nature somehow -- unless, of course, it is one of those Enron style "asset-free" companies, in which case its claims (and its year end accounting) are more super-natural. No, the question is about particular kinds of nature. The question is about the commons.
The other mistake resides, of course, in the verb "own." As in the equivalence between patent and own. Patents, as we have said before (and said and said) are grants of monopoly. They are inventions of state governance. Unlike contracts, monopolies of this type have a time limit. The reason for this is simple: the perpetual ownership of things intellectual, whether it is the sentences in a book or the method for clicking through the webpages to own the book, are eventually common property. The patent office is borrowing from you every time they issue a patent. The copyright people are doing the same. And you -- you out there, scribbling a poem, or working on a new fuel cell, are continually borrowing from the commons to do what you do. There is no work of art or man that refers only to itself. Well, outside of a nuthouse. This isn't a controversial point. It is, in fact, the reason nobody had ever heard of the phrase Intellectual Property until a couple of decades ago. If we go back to the discussion of patents in the Constitutional era, as Lawrence Lessig has shown, you will see that Jefferson, like Adam Smith, viewed patents as monopolies, and was accordingly reluctant to encourage their growth. Only lately has this insidious ownership idea crept out of the teeming minds of Monsato, Microsoft and their ilk. This isn't the new economy, this is the Hubris Economy. Only in the current atmosphere would it be possible for a company to actually think it can buy the idea of corn seeds -- which is what Monsanto has done in Mexico. And the reason this is happening is that the conservative judiciary, far from displaying that fealty to the past which they like to entertain themselves with at the Federalist Society banquets, are actually wildly, promiscuously legislating.
SO: sorry LI has to be so casuistical, so ... boring. But let's go over it. In the sense that I own the apartment I am living in -- that is, I rent it -- yes, one can talk of ownership. But owning in the sense of my ownership of the computer I'm using is out of the question. Ah, the thing is to prevent, by semantic means, the question from even being posable. So the question won't be posed, the question will be perpetually distorted, as long as Business Journalists go along for the ride and quietly seed the ownership-patent equivalency in their little business stories.
The fight about Intellectual Property goes on. Listen to the shots outside your window in the lonely night, listen to the sirens coming closer. Converts to the Open source idea, which is also the idea of the commons, come out of their closets, in the business world, are attacked, and then go back in. One such is the Michael Capellas, CEO of Compaq, who made a slip the other day. He was speaking before a biotech conference in Boston. Here's a couple of grafs from the Globe report: "The hundreds of biotech executives and venture capitalists at yesterday's conference hope to make immense profits by turning that processed data into salable products. Some aim to do this by obtaining patents on genetic information that they discover along the way. But this is a controversial idea, with some critics arguing that because genes are a part of nature, businesses shouldn't be able to own them.
In a comment that stunned the audience into several seconds of silence, Capellas responded to a question on the issue by flatly saying that companies shouldn't be able to patent genes. But he quickly backed away from the comment, pleading ignorance of all the ramifications of the issue. ''If you're asking me what should be patentable,'' Capellas said, ''I don't know.''
In a later telephone interview, Capellas stressed that companies had a right to control their scientific discoveries. ''I absolutely believe that the intellectual property must be protected,'' he said. Original processes and products growing out of genetic research should definitely be subject to patent protection, he said.But he repeated his concern that patent law might not be the best way to deal with basic genetic information. ''I'm not sure if the best way you do that is taking individual components and patenting them,'' Capellas said. ''That process doesn't lend itself well to this new world of bioinformatics.''
Catch that explanation of open source resistance: since genes are "a part of nature,' businesses shouldn't be able to own them. There are, as my puss-in-boots readers will know (oh you heady slicers and dicers of the dialectic!)
two major problems with that sentence. The first is that opposition is based on businesses 'owning nature." If a business exists, it is going to own nature somehow -- unless, of course, it is one of those Enron style "asset-free" companies, in which case its claims (and its year end accounting) are more super-natural. No, the question is about particular kinds of nature. The question is about the commons.
The other mistake resides, of course, in the verb "own." As in the equivalence between patent and own. Patents, as we have said before (and said and said) are grants of monopoly. They are inventions of state governance. Unlike contracts, monopolies of this type have a time limit. The reason for this is simple: the perpetual ownership of things intellectual, whether it is the sentences in a book or the method for clicking through the webpages to own the book, are eventually common property. The patent office is borrowing from you every time they issue a patent. The copyright people are doing the same. And you -- you out there, scribbling a poem, or working on a new fuel cell, are continually borrowing from the commons to do what you do. There is no work of art or man that refers only to itself. Well, outside of a nuthouse. This isn't a controversial point. It is, in fact, the reason nobody had ever heard of the phrase Intellectual Property until a couple of decades ago. If we go back to the discussion of patents in the Constitutional era, as Lawrence Lessig has shown, you will see that Jefferson, like Adam Smith, viewed patents as monopolies, and was accordingly reluctant to encourage their growth. Only lately has this insidious ownership idea crept out of the teeming minds of Monsato, Microsoft and their ilk. This isn't the new economy, this is the Hubris Economy. Only in the current atmosphere would it be possible for a company to actually think it can buy the idea of corn seeds -- which is what Monsanto has done in Mexico. And the reason this is happening is that the conservative judiciary, far from displaying that fealty to the past which they like to entertain themselves with at the Federalist Society banquets, are actually wildly, promiscuously legislating.
SO: sorry LI has to be so casuistical, so ... boring. But let's go over it. In the sense that I own the apartment I am living in -- that is, I rent it -- yes, one can talk of ownership. But owning in the sense of my ownership of the computer I'm using is out of the question. Ah, the thing is to prevent, by semantic means, the question from even being posable. So the question won't be posed, the question will be perpetually distorted, as long as Business Journalists go along for the ride and quietly seed the ownership-patent equivalency in their little business stories.
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