In article <20020514003455.B23612@mango.veggie.com>, frank@esperance-linux.co.uk (Frank Shute) wrote:

Have you got a link to the flamewar on Cix?

Somewhere in the mists of time in the linux conference - I dunno where now, purged it years ago off my personal database! I've heard rumours about RMS >;) However, I will spring to the support of the Guardian in its general reportage - the degree of well thought out articles are one of its strengths IMHO, and its economic reportage has been highly accurate in terms of predictions/outcomes over the last couple of decades. What one generally misses is the sheer mass of basic news reportage anywhere, though. But back to linux - I'd agree, the computing section is a dis-service to the customers, and prejudices aside, one could do a lot better (hell /I/ could do a lot better!) in commissioning stuff that would allow the ordinary adequately educated punter to get a handle on informational technology, and the connections to longer term developments in tek as well as the socio-economic implications of these. To give the G its due, its the only mainstream that has consistently had its eye on the ball with regard to globalisation, but in common with most of the British technically illiterate "ruling class" (courtesy of the Oxbridge cleverly-stupid culture) simply hasn't grasped the manner in which technological developments are becoming pretty deterministic with regard to the exercise of power by dominant organisations.

On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 10:16:00PM +0100, M.Blackmore wrote:

<snip>

To give the G its due, its the only mainstream that has consistently had its eye on the ball with regard to globalisation, but in common with most of the British technically illiterate "ruling class" (courtesy of the Oxbridge cleverly-stupid culture) simply hasn't grasped the manner in which technological developments are becoming pretty deterministic with regard to the exercise of power by dominant organisations.

Since the list is a bit slack I thought I'd follow up some earlier ignorant comments I made about `globalisation'. Apologies to those who are not interested but I thought some might be interested in this. I've tried to do some reading up about what `globalisation' is all about and I like Chomsky's take on it and I think I understand why the mainstream press (including the Guardian) doesn't give him much of a platform. Since he's a professor in linguistics, he seems to cut through the crap and writes well IMO. It's from: http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1824/nc.htm and the article is worth reading in it's entirity. Quoting: Let me finally turn to the last of the questions that I mentioned -- the process that's called "globalisation." But first let's be clear about the notion. If we use the term neutrally, globalisation just means international integration, welcome or not depending on the human consequences. In Western doctrinal systems, which prevail everywhere as a result of Western power, the term has a somewhat different and narrower meaning. It refers to a specific form of international integration that has been pursued with particular intensity in the last quarter century. It's designed primarily in the interest of private concentrations of power, and the interests of everyone else are incidental. With that terminology in place, the great mass of people around the world who object to these programmes can be labelled ``anti-globalisation,'' as they always are. The force of ideology and power is such that they even accept that ridiculous designation. They can then be derided as ``primitivists'' who want to return to the ``Stone Age,'' to harm the poor, and other terms of abuse with which we are familiar. It's the way you'd expect a dedicated propaganda system to work, but it's a little surprising as it's so powerful that even its victims accept it. They shouldn't. No sane person is opposed to globalisation. The question is what form it takes. <snip> One might ask why public opposition to globalisation, what's called globalisation, has been so high for many years. That seems strange in an era when globalisation has led to unprecedented prosperity, so we're constantly told. And that's supposedly particularly true in the United States with its "fairy-tale economy." Throughout the 1990s, the United States enjoyed ``the greatest economic boom in America's history -- and the world's.'' Quoting Anthony Lewis in The New York Times last March, repeating the standard refrain from the left end, the critical end of the admissible spectrum. It is of course conceded that everything isn't perfect, there are a few flaws, some have been left behind in the economic miracle, and since we're good-hearted people, we have to do something about that. These ``flaws'' reflect a profound and troubling dilemma. The rapid growth and great prosperity brought by globalisation has a concomitant: growing inequality, because there are some who lack the skills to enjoy these wondrous gifts and opportunities. That picture is so conventional that it may be hard to realise that apart from the growing inequality, it is totally false. There is just no truth to it and it's known to be false. Per capita economic growth in the so-called roaring 1990s in the United States was about the same as Europe, much lower than in the first twenty-five post-War years -- before what's called globalisation. So we can ask how the conventional picture can be so radically different from uncontroversial facts, and they are uncontroversial. Well, the answer is very simple. For a small sector of the society, the Nineties really were a grand economic boom. And that sector happened to include the people who tell everyone else the wonderful news. It's only the world that's different. There's a counterpart in India, which I don't have to talk about, it's familiar. Suppose we take a quick look at the record over a longer stretch. International economic integration, what's called globalisation in a technical sense, increased steadily up until the First World War, levelled or reduced between the wars, picked up again after the Second World War. It's now reaching roughly the levels of a century ago by gross measures. The fine structure is quite different. By some measures, the period before World War I had a higher degree of international integration. That had to do particularly with movement of people, what Adam Smith called ``the free circulation of labour,'' which was the foundation of free trade. That reached its peak before World War I, it's much lower now. By other measures, globalisation is greater now, most dramatically the flow of short-time speculative capital, which is far beyond any precedent. These differences reflect the central features of the contemporary version of globalisation. To an extent even beyond the norm, capital has priority - people are incidental. There is a more technical measure of globalisation. That's convergence to a global market, which means a single price and wage everywhere. That certainly hasn't happened, in fact the opposite has happened. With regard to incomes, inequality is soaring through the globalisation period -- within countries and across countries. And that's expected to continue. <snip> It's too late to give details but if you look at the post-War period, the period since the Second World War, it has actually undergone two phases. There was a period up to the early 1970s when the Bretton Woods arrangements were in place with capital controls and regulated currencies. That was a period of very substantial and equitable economic growth. It's commonly called "the golden age" of capitalism. That changed in the last twenty-five years, with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system. Financial markets were liberalized, constraints on capital flow were eliminated, and currencies were deregulated. That has been associated with a marked deterioration in standard measures of the economy -- the rate of growth of the economy, of productivity, of investment, in fact even growth of trade. Even with all the misleading definitions of trade, its growth has declined during the globalisation period, these last twenty-five years. There have been much higher interest rates, which harm the economy, increasing financial volatility, and other harmful consequences. So let's return to that profound and troubling dilemma that we're supposed to be worried about. The rapid growth and great prosperity brought by so-called globalisation has also brought global inequality because some lack the skills to use the opportunities. There is no dilemma: the rapid growth and prosperity are simply a myth, except for a very small sector. One can debate the economic consequences of liberalisation of capital, but one consequence is very clear: it undermines democracy. That was understood very well by the framers of the Bretton Woods agreement after World War II - the U.S. and Britain. One reason, explicit reason, why those arrangements were founded on regulation of capital was in order to allow governments to carry out social democratic programmes, which had enormous popular support, in the United States as well. Free capital movement yields what's called a ``Virtual Parliament,'' which has "veto power" over government decisions, sharply restricting democratic options. I'm quoting from technical papers on the financial system now: With free movement of capital, governments face a "dual constituency" - voters and speculators. Speculators "conduct moment-by-moment referendums on government policies," and if they don't like them, they "veto" them by attacking the country's currency or removing its capital. Even in rich countries, the private constituency prevails. That's understood to be a very striking difference, maybe the most significant difference, between the current phase of globalisation and the period before World War I, which it partly resembles. -- Frank *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Boroughbridge. Tel: 01423 323019 --------- PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/