India

One Sure Thing About Globalization – The American Motion Pictures Industry World Hegemony Part 3

Jacques Delacroix Economics, History , , , , ,

[Editor’s note: this lecture was delivered to the Leavey Institute of Santa Clara University in 2003. You can find it reproduced in whole here]

Broken Promises

Harm to the poor on a considerable scale occurs when rich countries suddenly violate the principles of free trade they publicly support, on the main. The US government and those of other post-industrial countries will periodically make a show of vaunting the merits of free trade on stages (such as the World Trade Organization) that guarantee worldwide publicity. These actions must encourage at least some of the most enterprising poor in poor countries to produce for distant markets they are not in a position to understand.

When the governments of rich and large entities, such as the US, Japan and the European Union, suddenly inhibit the free movement of products, those enterprising poor people in poor countries suffer, and suffer disproportionately. Thus, the recent passing of new American farm subsidies legislation (in 2002) makes it difficult or impossible for small farmers in the Sahel area of Africa to compete on the world ‘s cotton markets with American growers (Thurow and Kilman, 2002)(6). The steel tariffs erected by the Bush administration – with the full complicity of Congress – must have similar effect on steelworkers in some of the Third World and Eastern European steel-producing countries.

Neither of these policies nor the broken promises they imply, can be easily defended on moral or rational grounds. Directly, it can probably be shown that the economic actors of poor countries who embraced free trade end up worse off than they would be if they had toed to a more parochial (“autarkic”) line. Indirectly, such breaches of faith by powerful rich countries contribute to the stagnation of the Third World by seeming to prove wrong those who adopted a stance leading most surely to economic development: embracers of production for worldwide markets. (In my experience, well-educated defenders of national economic ”self-sufficiency” rarely care to argue against free trade in principle; instead, they rely on evidence that there is no real free trade but a poisonous international game where the dice are loaded against the poor in poor countries. Sometimes, they have a point.)

The American Motion Pictures Industry’s Hegemony Continue reading →

Tectonic History and Gondwanan Geopolitics in the Larsemann Hills, Antarctica

Brandon Christensen Links, Politics , , , ,

That’s the title of this article (pdf) in the Political and Legal Anthropology Review. From the abstract:

At the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, an Indian delegate proposed a new research base located within an environmental protection area, because it is where India and Antarctica were connected on the 125-million-year-old continent of Gondwana. How did this claim come to be successful for the Indian Antarctic Program? In the production of documents within international governing bodies, policy makers enroll allies, emphasizing particular aspects of their plans to members of diverse epistemic communities. Instead of trying to make nationally oriented ideas work through uniform procedural rules, international policy makers reshape the contours of acceptable policy-making procedure and the political possibilities of international governance.

The whole thing is interesting, especially if you have a weird obsession with Antarctica like I do! Possibly gated.

“Stocks Slammed as Dow Erases 2012 Gains”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics , , , , , , , , , , ,

That’s the title to a headline piece over at CNN.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) plunged 275 points, or 2.2%, the biggest one-day drop since November. The blue-chip index gave up all its gains for the year, and is now 99 points below where it finished 2011. The S&P 500 (SPX) lost 32 points, or 2.5%, and the Nasdaq (COMP) dropped 80 points, or 2.8%.

Ouch. The cause of the plunge?

“The U.S. employment report was simply terrible,” said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman.

The May jobs report showed only 69,000 jobs were added to payrolls, less than half the 150,000 jobs forecast by economists surveyed by CNNMoney. The unemployment rate ticked higher for the first time in a year, rising to 8.2%.

I take three things away from this: Continue reading →

The Best Meal and the Worst Meal Ever

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , , , ,

We have been working hard and we have been stressed by the unprincipled doings in Washington. So, here is a new story.

First, let me pull rank on you, reader. I was born and reared in France. I left when I was twenty-one. My godmother was a fine cook in the French tradition. She made it a point to train my palate from when I was a little kid, including with good wines. (You would be amazed to find out what two glasses of wine with lunch do to a seven-year old.) Then, I moved to San Francisco where it’s possible (though not easy) to find an excellent Chinese meal. I spent most of my adult life there, with frequent trips to Europe where I moved around as a dedicated gastronomy tourist, though not the moneyed kind. Once, for two weeks, I sampled the most expensive Japanese cuisine, possibly the best in the world overall. For a longer period, a Vietnamese lady with a fine pair of chopsticks graced my home and my kitchen with her presence. She was supplanted for thirty years following by an Indian lady who puts her pride in her cooking. I would like to tell you that the Vietnamese lady and the Indian lady had a kitchen cat-fight and that the latter won me as the prize but that would be stretching it

In any case, I am pretty sure I know more about food than anyone raised on burgers, fried chicken and Mom’s Sunday brisket and vegetables, even with Italian great-grandma’s Italian spaghetti thrown in occasionally. Yes, this sounds a little pretentious. So, what’s your point? Now that I have got you humbled, you will pay attention to the two demanding philosophical stories rolled into one below. Continue reading →

Some Great Links From Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Economics, Links , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A fascinating blog post on Indian domestic politics and foreign policy by a Ph.D. student living in New Delhi and studying at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Alex Warren, a journalist with extensive experience in the Middle East, writes about Libya’s decentralization.

“The Current Models Have Nothing to Say.” That is economist Robert Higgs’s analysis of modern, orthodox economics.

Might regionalism help solve Central America’s woes?  Be sure to check out the rest of the blog, by Seth Kaplan, too.

Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic has a penetrating look at the logic of a drug warrior (h/t Brian Aitken)

Co-editor Fred Foldvary, writing in the Progress Report, explains that value is subjective.  This is an important concept when it comes to understanding economics.