Tapsearch Com EditorBewildered New World in Greenspan era
January 8th 2008 21:46
Bizarre Politics Reports:
Bewildered New World
...continues a view of Greenspan from the trenches by Ray Tapajna
Bewildered New World - based on Cliff Barney's interview with Manuel Castells in Upside Magazine in Nov 1997 - and The Age of Turbulence by Greenspan 2008
After NAFTA and GATT took over with the Y2k crisis needing to be solved, I was wondering if anyone cared about the devastation of human dignity in the workday. The surge in Globalization was being artificially driven by powerful forces. Free Trade was its tool. Free Trade is not trade as historically practiced and defined. Human beings as workers are the main commodities being traded. Free Trade's main function is moving production and factories from place to place based on the cheapest labor markets of the world.
As a trouble shooter supplyer for computer components, I kept many trade journals on hand . One of my best trade magazines was Upside. It was for venture capitalists but had a human touch to it. Cliff Barney was one of the magazine writers who wrote about many social justice issues. I thought it was odd to see this combination in a high tech venture magazine.
Upside closed down in 2001 but during its brief life, it excelled in matching up the high tech world with human dignity issues.
Cliff Barney's interview with Manuel Castells proved to be a masterpiece and it should be a must read for all college students. Manuel Castells wrote many books relating to the global economy and the high tech world. I was surprised how fast I bonded to his works being a conservative populist. Castells was an anti-Franco activist and is a professor at Berkely.
In the "Bewildered New World", Castells says the financial world has taken on an independent logic of its own; you make money in the global casino, regardless what is happening in the production world. This is what struck me deeply as I read Alan Greenspan's book - The Age of Turbulence. It is obvious that Greenspan is part of the problem and not the solution. The flow of capital and investments are separate from the workers doing the work. The stock market now thrives on workers getting fired instead of hired.
Castells says the internet has taken on the hue that can be described as a Rapture of the Net, wherein an unproven mystical network acts as something real as a general purpose solution for social and cultural problems. It is presented as a gateway to paradise. We are going to fix the schools, reinvent government, link the world in an orgy of mass communication --- and get rich in the process.
However, the basic tool in the classroom is the micro computer. Its value is only about $150 and in its use, not much value is added over that amount - as we can readily observe with workers in a fast food restaurant needing to know this technology to get minimum wage jobs.
Castells does not limit the "network" to the Internet. One net might be the stock exchange market, with its support service centers, banks and financial officers; another a political network such as the Eurpopean Union that Sir James Goldsmith , the corporate raider who turned into a populist felt was a betrayal of the real Free Enteprise system. Another network links the coca fields, clandestine labs, secret landing strips, money launderers and the economic hit men for the World Bank that John Perkins talks about in his book - The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Yet another might be television networks, news teams, associated press, computer graphics specialists and mobile transmission networks.
If you are outside of any of these networks, you do not exist. On the government front, nation-states become less sovereign and become more like power brokers in a world of wheeling and dealing. Governments find they can no longer control their currencies or fulfill the promises of the entitlements. The democratic process is isolated to branding and image making my the media. It has caused a crisis of democracy by transforming citizen representation into image making. We fight wars against made up words like terrorism or axis of evils where all can be included without any real identification.
Globalization calls for a large portion of humankind to be disenfranchised politically and impoverished economically. The children working in factories in places like India are said to be happy they can bring home some money to their destitute family. Workers are the main commodities being traded. The vast working poor and underclass can never negotiate with their employers because employers keep shifting places as much as they want, or outsourcing, or bringing workers or supplies from anywhere in the world. Factories and production are portable ready to be moved again and again if the "natives get restless".
A society which is only oriented toward production at its cheapest level ultimately destroy itself. When production is mobile and portable being moved from one locality to another, then the social cost and finally the economic cost, in terms of burned-out-people, burned out capital, burned-out-societies, will drag down the business productiviy as well.
If one counts all the over the age 18 who are healthy and not in any school, medical institution or jail ( U.S. keeps breaking the prison population record ) and thus could be working, but are not, one finds that almost half the country's human capacity is not being used. Mexico reports a low unemployment rate just like the USA does and yet, millions of Mexican workers are migrating to the U.S. seeking economic survival. This comes after the U.S. has moved more than 4,000 factories to Mexico. This an end product of Globalization and Free Trade. President Bush responds to it by saying the workers come to the USA to take jobs Americans will not take. Now many of the jobs in Mexico are moving to China where workers will take jobs for pennies a day and working children are reported as being happy they can bring home a few cents for their families to survive.
Obviously, Alan Greenspan leaves out any discussion of the above from his book - The Age of Turbulence --- in the Greenspan era as a shadow president. The Free Market stops at the door of the Federal Reserve Bank and the World Bank.
See Open Letter to all U.S. Presidential Candidates
Bewildered New World - based on Cliff Barney's interview with Manuel Castells in Upside Magazine in Nov 1997 - and The Age of Turbulence by Greenspan 2008
After NAFTA and GATT took over with the Y2k crisis needing to be solved, I was wondering if anyone cared about the devastation of human dignity in the workday. The surge in Globalization was being artificially driven by powerful forces. Free Trade was its tool. Free Trade is not trade as historically practiced and defined. Human beings as workers are the main commodities being traded. Free Trade's main function is moving production and factories from place to place based on the cheapest labor markets of the world.
As a trouble shooter supplyer for computer components, I kept many trade journals on hand . One of my best trade magazines was Upside. It was for venture capitalists but had a human touch to it. Cliff Barney was one of the magazine writers who wrote about many social justice issues. I thought it was odd to see this combination in a high tech venture magazine.
Upside closed down in 2001 but during its brief life, it excelled in matching up the high tech world with human dignity issues.
Cliff Barney's interview with Manuel Castells proved to be a masterpiece and it should be a must read for all college students. Manuel Castells wrote many books relating to the global economy and the high tech world. I was surprised how fast I bonded to his works being a conservative populist. Castells was an anti-Franco activist and is a professor at Berkely.
In the "Bewildered New World", Castells says the financial world has taken on an independent logic of its own; you make money in the global casino, regardless what is happening in the production world. This is what struck me deeply as I read Alan Greenspan's book - The Age of Turbulence. It is obvious that Greenspan is part of the problem and not the solution. The flow of capital and investments are separate from the workers doing the work. The stock market now thrives on workers getting fired instead of hired.
Castells says the internet has taken on the hue that can be described as a Rapture of the Net, wherein an unproven mystical network acts as something real as a general purpose solution for social and cultural problems. It is presented as a gateway to paradise. We are going to fix the schools, reinvent government, link the world in an orgy of mass communication --- and get rich in the process.
However, the basic tool in the classroom is the micro computer. Its value is only about $150 and in its use, not much value is added over that amount - as we can readily observe with workers in a fast food restaurant needing to know this technology to get minimum wage jobs.
Castells does not limit the "network" to the Internet. One net might be the stock exchange market, with its support service centers, banks and financial officers; another a political network such as the Eurpopean Union that Sir James Goldsmith , the corporate raider who turned into a populist felt was a betrayal of the real Free Enteprise system. Another network links the coca fields, clandestine labs, secret landing strips, money launderers and the economic hit men for the World Bank that John Perkins talks about in his book - The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Yet another might be television networks, news teams, associated press, computer graphics specialists and mobile transmission networks.
If you are outside of any of these networks, you do not exist. On the government front, nation-states become less sovereign and become more like power brokers in a world of wheeling and dealing. Governments find they can no longer control their currencies or fulfill the promises of the entitlements. The democratic process is isolated to branding and image making my the media. It has caused a crisis of democracy by transforming citizen representation into image making. We fight wars against made up words like terrorism or axis of evils where all can be included without any real identification.
Globalization calls for a large portion of humankind to be disenfranchised politically and impoverished economically. The children working in factories in places like India are said to be happy they can bring home some money to their destitute family. Workers are the main commodities being traded. The vast working poor and underclass can never negotiate with their employers because employers keep shifting places as much as they want, or outsourcing, or bringing workers or supplies from anywhere in the world. Factories and production are portable ready to be moved again and again if the "natives get restless".
A society which is only oriented toward production at its cheapest level ultimately destroy itself. When production is mobile and portable being moved from one locality to another, then the social cost and finally the economic cost, in terms of burned-out-people, burned out capital, burned-out-societies, will drag down the business productiviy as well.
If one counts all the over the age 18 who are healthy and not in any school, medical institution or jail ( U.S. keeps breaking the prison population record ) and thus could be working, but are not, one finds that almost half the country's human capacity is not being used. Mexico reports a low unemployment rate just like the USA does and yet, millions of Mexican workers are migrating to the U.S. seeking economic survival. This comes after the U.S. has moved more than 4,000 factories to Mexico. This an end product of Globalization and Free Trade. President Bush responds to it by saying the workers come to the USA to take jobs Americans will not take. Now many of the jobs in Mexico are moving to China where workers will take jobs for pennies a day and working children are reported as being happy they can bring home a few cents for their families to survive.
Obviously, Alan Greenspan leaves out any discussion of the above from his book - The Age of Turbulence --- in the Greenspan era as a shadow president. The Free Market stops at the door of the Federal Reserve Bank and the World Bank.
See Open Letter to all U.S. Presidential Candidates
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