31/12/2003
Gelukkig Nieuwjaar - Happy New Year!
Beste wensen voor 2004!!!
Best wishes for 2004!!!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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31/12/2003
Annus horribilis for free trade?
2003 was a bad year for free trade. But could 2004 it’s annus horribilis? Moises Naim is pessimistic:
"The resentments and the bitter accusations flying between Europe and the US and developing countries over who was responsible for the breakdown in Cancun will be felt in 2004 and beyond. In the US, the electoral campaign will be in full swing, and anxiety about jobs lost to trade and offshoring of production will become common concerns for the candidates to address. In Europe, the impact of a Euro that is crippling exports will make any talk of trade concessions politically suicidal."
As already pointed out, by people like Brad DeLong, there are no jobs lost due to trade and offshoring. There is "job-shift", but no "job-loss". My hope rest on those people, the big majority, who will win by more free trade and offhoring: those IT-engineers in India and China, consumers in the U.S. and in Europe, businessleaders and workers in capital goods industries and in the exportsectors of the economy, yeah, even the workers in sweatshops all over the world.
Economists like Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley and Jeffrey Garten of Yale Management School, magazines like Business Week, and consultants like McKinsey, point to the perils of protectionism for the U.S. economy and for U.S. companies. As those people write for a business-audience there is hope that at least American businesses will choose for a strategy of opennes in 2004, pressuring administration and congress to back down on it’s protectionist stance against China and India.
What about the losers? American policy need to change here too. To paraphrase Rajan and Zingales a little bit in their book "Saving capitalism from the capitalists", free trade is a kind of public good, and so collective action is needed to maintain it. A worker that loses his jobs by trade loses more then a consumer who has to pay less for it’s software from India. If we want to avoid a backlash against trade the losers must be brought in from the cold. Collective action here is needed, action by the government. The same goes for businesses. Some companies will lose, because they are not competitive enough: how do we help them and their workers, without sacrifizing the benefits of competition and open markets. Or, how do we save capitalism from the capitalists?Actually, Rajan (now head of the IMF research department) and Zingales makes some sensible proposals:
- reduce imbumbents (the textile industry, big steel, sugarproducers...) incentives to oppose markets and trade: prevent a firm from growing big enough to have enough political clout to suppres markets. Of course, as the authors point out, drafting such a law will not be easy, and some proposals are downright silly. Other possibilities: use the property tax to allocate ownership to the most efficiënt hands, improve corporate governance, re-structure the inheritance tax so that we get a more efficient distribution of control over assets;
- improve the safety net for the distressed: insure people directly and not through firms (prevent also the capture of the losers by special interests), design insurance before the fact (his provides more security), insure against permanent change (create and maintain the value of flexible human capital, by investing in health, education...).
Their is more, but as the King of Blogs would say, buy and read the book.
So whith the right policy mix of opennes, reducing the power of the special intrests and helping the losers, the U.S. could contribute to a renewed dynamism in the move towards free trade and globalization.
Unfortunately, the problem may be Europe. As Naim points out, while Europe is being hurt by a too expensive euro (in my view, it is mostly hurt by a too passive central bank), offshoring is almost completely out of the question. And contrary to the U.S., Europe is almost blinded for the manifest benefits of more free immigration. So Naim could still be right after all.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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30/12/2003
Bob Samuelson on the role of hatred in American politics
It’s bad when disagreement turns into hatred, says Robert Samuelson:
"Once disagreement turns into self-proclaimed hate, it becomes blinding. You can see only one all-encompassing truth, which is your villain’s deceit, stupidity, selfishness or evil. This was true of Clinton haters, and it’s increasingly true of Bush haters. A small army of pundits and talking heads has now devoted itself to one story: the sins of Bush, Cheney and their supporters. They ruined the economy with massive tax cuts and budget deficits; the Iraq war was an excuse for corporate profiteering; their arrogance alienated foreign allies.
All ambiguity vanishes. For example: The economy is recovering, stimulated in part by huge budget deficits; and many traditional allies of the United States like having Bush as a political foil to excuse them from costly and unpopular commitments."
But Bush should not be distracted. As non other then Bill Clinton showed it before, it’s success, not failure that breeds hatred:
In the end, Bush hating says more about the haters than the hated -- and here, too, the parallels with Clinton are strong. This hatred embodies much fear and insecurity. The anti-Clinton fanatics hated him not simply because he occasionally lied, committed adultery or exhibited an air of intellectual superiority. What really infuriated them was that he kept succeeding -- he won reelection, his approval ratings stayed high -- and that diminished their standing. If Clinton was approved, they must be disapproved.
Ditto for Bush. If he succeeded less, he’d be hated less. His fiercest detractors don’t loathe him merely because they think he’s mediocre, hypocritical and simplistic. What they truly resent is that his popularity suggests that the country might be more like him than it is like them. They fear he’s exiling them politically. On one level, their embrace of hatred aims to make others share their outrage; but on another level, it’s a self-indulgent declaration of moral superiority -- something that makes them feel better about themselves. Either way, it represents another dreary chapter in the continuing coarsening of public discourse."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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30/12/2003
The Puppet Show
Readers of my blog know that the members of the Iraqi Governing Council are no puppets of the United States. Well, they did it again, Forbes reports:
"Iraq’s Governing Council will let Russian and French firms compete for oil sector development contracts despite opposition from pro-U.S. members, a leading Iraqi politician said on Tuesday. Hamid al-Bayati, a senior official with the main Shi’ite Islamic group Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said a Governing Council delegation led by his party has told Moscow and Paris not to fear exclusion from Iraq, although they did business with Saddam Hussein and opposed the U.S.-led war that toppled him. Bayati said Iraq could also honour a $3.8 billion deal between Russian company Lukoil and former leader Saddam Hussein struck in 1997.
"We asked Paris and Moscow to be involved in the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty and reconstruction, including oil. We do not want them to be isolated from Iraq," Bayati told Reuters.
The delegation, which met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, included SCIRI head Abdelaziz al-Hakim, who is keen along with some Islamist and Kurdish members of the Governing Council to strengthen relations with countries like France and Russia and become less dependent on Washington and its allies.
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal al-Talabani, who was supported by the Soviet Union and lately became an ally of the United States, was also with Hakim."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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30/12/2003
China does it again
From eWeek:
"The global chip industry is expected to grow by 18 percent next year as personal-computer and cell-phone shipments surge, market-research company IDC said Tuesday. From this year to 2008, IDC predicts that the semiconductor market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.5 percent, with revenue rising from $160 billion this year to $282 billion in 2008."
The culprit this surging growth in IT? China of course!
"China, the world’s largest consumer of cell phones and second largest consumer of PCs, will continue to drive growth, the company said. Thanks to China, Pacific Asia is becoming the dominant region for PC and cell phone demand and production, the research firm added."
But who will supply much of those demanded PC’s and cell phones? Ah, we will!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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30/12/2003
En nu iets helemaal anders...
Waarom steekt de kip de straat over?
Het antwoord vind je hier, enfin, de antwoorden.
Gepost door/Posted by: Dehaene
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29/12/2003
Something to read...
Okey, they are free market fundamentalists (U.K.’s original free market think-thank), but that doesn’t mean of course that they don’t write interesting and valuable stuff, like railway.com, in which Robert Miller explores the parallels between two technological revolutions, early British railways and ICT.
Kevin Brancato has read and reviewed the monograph here. He writes:
"(Miller) defends both the railway stock bubbles and the broad gauge railway; he says that those who criticize either do not understand the positive economic role that they play: the market process determines which companies deserve to succeed, and brings about superior economic and technological standards. As far as the bubbles go, Miller distinguishes between fraudulent or nonexistent rail companies, and actual rail companies, for whom the little and big stock market manias were of no long-term consequence."
Miller’s favorable view of the railway bubble, and of bubbles in general, gets corroborated by this piece of Yale economist William Nordhaus in the New York Review. Nordhaus of course writes about the ICT-bubble:
"One important puzzle about this period is how the new economy of improved technology and computerization could have played such a central part in the rebound of the productivity growth of the 1990s while many new economy companies—selling toys, groceries, greeting cards, cartoons, legal advice, and auctioning airline and hotel reservations—proved to be such catastrophically poor investments. The performance of the new economy is best seen in the companies concerned with information technology and industrial machinery (which include computers, semiconductors, and related equipment). Here the growth in output per hour worked averaged 15 percent per year between 1995 and 2001. This rapid growth is responsible for at least half of the productivity upsurge in the last decade.
In view of the enormous productivity growth in these sectors, does it not seem plausible that those who invent these new products and services or put them on the market should be able to capture some of the profits from them? If GDP is $1 trillion larger in 2003 because of the new economy (which is a pretty good guess), shouldn’t some of the higher income go to entrepreneurs in that sector? One might think so, but it did not happen. The underlying mistake here is what I call "the alchemist fallacy." I don’t mean the obvious fallacy that a miraculous process could transmute base metals into gold. Rather, the alchemist fallacy was to think that once a process for producing gold from lead was discovered, gold would retain its scarcity, and the discoverers would be rich beyond belief.
During the 1990s, people thought modern-day alchemy had been discovered in the transformation of electrons, optical fibers, and secret programming codes into market value. But innovation does not automatically lead to profits. Economic history teaches us that when a wondrous new product is invented, its price generally falls as other firms enter and imitate the product, rapidly eating away at the profits. In fact, with a few exceptions, companies producing innovations on average earn no more than a normal return on their investments. Virtually anyone could, and apparently did, set up a dot-com making use of the Internet, and the market was flooded with electronic greeting cards, on-line grocery shopping, free Internet service, and similar companies that were losing money in order to make sales. After the gold rush ended in 2000, according to recent data, new economy firms appear to have earned lower profits than those in the rest of the economy."
To which Brad DeLong remarks:
"I think Nordhaus is correct here. The right way to think about the bubble is that enthusiastic investors in the 1990s poured a fortune into expanding the nation’s capital stock and as a result greatly boosted the productivity of the American economy, but that barriers to entry were too low and competition to fierce for anyone (save Intel and Microsoft) to reap high profits. Productivity growth in the 1990s showed itself not in high profits in falling product prices and rising real standards of living. (At least, the profits were not high once companies had finished restating their earnings.) This is what one would expect in a high-pressure low-unemployment boom economy. And all of those who invested in high-tech companies that then burned their money expanding the nation’s capital stock and raising its productivity gave the rest of us a big and welcome present. We should thank them."
And thank the believers in the fruits of free markets.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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29/12/2003
Howard Dean’s socialism
Democratic presidential hopefull Howard Dean doesn’t think individuals are critical actors in America’s economy:
"It is time for us to spell out a new social contract a fundamental renegotiation of the rights and responsibilities of the critical actors in the American economy: families, corporations and government."
Kevin Brancato rightly disagrees:
"For families, corporations, and goverments--not individuals--to be the core owners of "rights" and entrusted with "responsibilites", a new social contract would indeed be required, because individuals would lose rights and responsibilities of a more fundamental kind... the kind that are not negotiable."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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28/12/2003
The Comeback Kid
Germany could well be the European comeback kid economically, says Adam Posen. Remarkable in this reversal is the rol played by the Green party:
"Perhaps surprisingly to Anglo-American observers, the Green Party coalition partners have been committed to the reform program, and aggressively ahead of it in many ways. This makes sense for the Greens ideologically, with their libertarian streak and their commitment to sustainable inter-generational policies. It also makes sense strategically, since they can then replace the FDP as the swing third party in German politics by being in the responsible center on economic issues (as the FDP was) but delivering on economic reform (as the FDP had not in the 1990s). Worth watching are future initiatives coming from the Green coalition partners to take on corporate welfare and guild-like arrangements that protect inefficient small businesses in Germany."
If only we had such greens in Belgium, we could be the comeback kid!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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27/12/2003
Sigh
Iran will not accept aid from Israel:
"The regime in Tehran has said it would not accept any help from the "Zionist regime".
"The Islamic Republic of Iran accepts all kinds of humanitarian aid from all countries and international organizations with the exception of the Zionist regime (Israel)," Jahanbakhsh Khanjani said Saturday, quoted by the official news agency IRNA."
(Via Little Green Footballs)
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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27/12/2003
Google and competition
The domination of Google may soon be over, reports Time. Other search engines like AlltheWeb are catching up, and large companies like Microsoft and Amazon are mounting a counter-attack. The results of this breathtaking competition could be very great, maybe not for Google, but certainly for consumers (and for society):
"In October Amazon debuted a service it calls Search Inside the Book that’s both simple in conception and staggering in its implications. Amazon scanned every page of 120,000 books into a database, and it now lets customers search the books’ complete contents online. In one stroke, Amazon made a new and immensely valuable kind of information available on the Web. (...) "I would compare it to the invention of the encyclopedia," says Joel Mokyr, professor of economics and history at Northwestern University. "If this is further developed, as I hope it will be, you may one day be able to sit in a village in Nepal and look up every book in the Library of Congress! Think about the implications of that: the knowledge of all times may one day be accessible from every spot on this planet. That’s one of the most democratic things I can think of.""
Meanwhile, let’s hope that the Google revolution in search-engines can be replicated in the stock-market.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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27/12/2003
And now India....
After China, India. In The New York Times (free registration required), Bob Herbert writes:
""Offshoring" and "outsourcing" are two of the favored euphemisms for shipping work overseas. I.B.M. prefers the term "global sourcing." Whatever you call it, the expansion of this practice from manufacturing to the higher-paying technical and white-collar levels is the latest big threat to employment in the U.S."
And:
"Most of the millions of white-collar workers who could be affected by this phenomenon over the next several years are clueless as to what they can do about it. They do not have organized representation in the workplace. And government policies overwhelmingly favor the corporations. Like the employees at I.B.M. whose holiday cheer has been dampened by uncertainty, these hard-working men and women and their families have little protection against the powerful forces of the global economy."
Matthew Iglesias and Brad DeLong already have made some valid points against Herbert’s view. In essence they say that many groups are better of thanks to outsourcing: consumers (lower prices for software and thus higher real incomes), Indian software engineers (who gets jobs for higher wages), Americans working in export industries and in construction or capital goods industries (thanks to capital inflows coming from countries like India). On the other hand we have indeed hard working people at I.B.M. but who are nevertheless very well paid. Why should they be protected to the detriment of those large groups of Indians, American workers and American consumers who benefit by offshoring?
The outsourcing of white-collar jobs is not "the latest big threat to employment in the U.S.". In the past, the offshoring of manufacturing jobs, did not lead to a net loss of employment in the American economy as a whole. Neither did NAFTA, a treaty that did unleash those powerfull forces of globalization. Indeed, in the nineties the U.S. created millions of new jobs, offshoring and Nafta notwithstanding (or maybe thanks to...). And there is no reason why this should be different now or in the future, au contraire:
"When some production of software and services is done abroad, some jobs will be done abroad
too. Recent efforts to quantify IT-related and other white collar job loss "offshore" frequently use the peak of the economic and technology boom as the base for analysis, thus ignoring the business cycle, trend decline in manufacturing employment, dollar overvaluation, and technology bust. Cutting through the technology boom and peak of the business cycle and comparing end-1999 with October 2003, employment in architecture and engineering occupations is stable, that in computer and mathematical occupations is 6 percent higher and in business and financial occupations, 9 percent higher. Going forward, broader diffusion of IT throughout the economy points to even greater demand for workers with IT skills and proficiency. In the 1990s, investment in IT propelled job growth for workers with IT skills to twice the rate of job growth in the overall economy. Over the next decade, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that job growth to 2010 in occupations requiring IT skills will be more than three times the rate of
job growth in the overall economy."
As Chatherine L. Mann explains, the "globalization of IT Services and white collar jobs" will be "the next wave of productivity growth" and so very beneficial to the American economy, American consumers and American workers (and for the world economy as a whole). Indeed, productivity growth is the basis of wealth and welfare:
"Although technological change is the most important driver of IT price declines, globalized
production and international trade made IT hardware some 10 to 30 percent less expensive than it otherwise would have been. These lower prices translated into higher productivity growth and an accumulated $230 billion in additional GDP (1995–2002). Real GDP growth might have averaged 0.3 percentage points less per year from 1995 to 2002, if globalized production (and the globalization of work in IT hardware, IJ) of IT hardware (and the globalization of jobs in IT hardware, IJ) had not occurred.(...)Just as for IT hardware, globally integrated production of IT software and services will reduce these prices and make tailoring of business-specific packages affordable, which will promote further diffusion of IT use and transformation throughout the US economy (which will improve productivity further, IJ)."
Mann concludes correctly:
"Globalization of software and services, enhanced IT use and transformation of activities in new sectors, and job creation are mutually dependent. Breaking the links, by limiting globalization of
software and services or by restricting IT investment and transformation of activities or by having insufficient skilled workers at home, puts robust and sustainable US economic performance at
risk."
Frans Groenendijk is also right however: we should be thinking about real policies to cushion the blow to those white-collar workers who will lose their jobs. But his view of Herbert is, i think, a little naïve. Herbert at least is implying that those white-collar workers should be protected against the forces of globalization. Let’s just hope that people like Herbert are not giving to much credit to the view that we should "break the links", for instance by restricting globalization or offshoring of software-industries. That we should not do.
UPDATE: Daniel Drezner points to an article from the Chicago Tribune on outsourcing. Outsourcing of manufacturing jobs this time, and caused by ...protectionism.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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26/12/2003
China, the U.S., and comparative advantage
Even in China people know what "comparative advantage" means:
"While Yang is sowing prosperity in China, the U.S.’s new penchant for protectionism could bust his big plans for brassieres. Asset Underwear, which grossed $10 million in exports last year, recently began negotiating with Sara Lee, maker of Playtex and Wonderbra, to produce some of its lingerie. But the new quotas on Chinese bras, bathrobes and knit fabrics have forced the Chicago company to withdraw. Yang is mystified. "Why can’t the Americans stick to making what we can’t?" he asks. "For little things like bras, nobody can compete with China.""
But some Americans seems to be unaware of this basic principle of an open capitalist economy:
"Some U.S. manufacturers are complaining and demanding protectionist legislation from an Administration that seems to be listening — at least with one ear. Although he bills himself as a free trader, Bush is finding it hard to ignore the millions of manufacturing jobs that have disappeared from states, like Pennsylvania and North Carolina, that will be pivotal in next year’s election. He has unleashed Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Treasury boss John Snow to bark at the Chinese about exports and the cheap value of the yuan. Lawmakers sensitive to job dislocations among their constituents have loaded into the pipeline at least six bills that relate to trade with China. Jim Leach, the Iowa Republican who chairs the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee of the House’s International Relations Committee, says that future conflicts with Beijing will be "more about geo-economics than geopolitics" and that it’s "largely up to China" to ease tensions."
If you’re searching for the soul of classical liberalism, maybe China is the place to start.
Anyway, read the rest of the article.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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26/12/2003
Beyond left and right
The Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC group) wants a moratorium on the development of nanotechnology. And Greenpeace concurs. Both organizations point to the precautionary principle; defined by ETC as follows:
"The Precautionary Principle says that governments have a responsibility to take preventive action to avoid harm to human health or the environment, even before scientific certainty of the harm has been established. Under the Precautionary Principle it is the proponent of a new technology, rather than the public, that bears the burden of proof."
Now let me rephrase that a little bit:
"The Pre-emptive strike Principle says that the U.S. government has a responsibility to take preventive action to avoid harm to its people or to the neighbors of rogue states, even before scientific certainty of the presence of weapons of mass destruction has been established. Under the Pre-emptive strike Principle it are the leaders of rogue states, rather than the United States, that bears the burden of proof."
Sounds more menacing, doesn’t it? It does. It is expounded by the right, by people like G.W. Bush and Paul Wolfowitz. But the logic of it is exactly the same as that of the "precautionary principle", a principle defended with fire by the left. But as explained by Ronald Bailey, the perils of this principle are not slight (i will return to this in a later post). I think we should go beyond left and right here.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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25/12/2003
The commercialization of Christmas
Johan Norberg has a nice quotation of Ayn Rand about the joys of Christmas:
"The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialized. The gift-buying…stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street-decorations put up by the department stores and other institutions – the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors – provide the city with a spectacular display, which only "commercial greed" could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle."
So, happy Christmas!
PS. Speaking of Johan Norberg, you can read an interview with him here. And buy his book: In defense of global capitalism.
A spirited Christmas gift!
UPDATE: Dan Drezner has more good news about Christmas and commercialism (or capitalism, if you will). In Eastern Europe they are bringing the commercialization of Christmas into practise. Good for them.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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25/12/2003
The Soul of Classical Liberalism
It’s christmas day and i’m writing about paradoxes, modern liberalism, and even hell. So let me compensate a bit, and report about that essential Christian thing: the soul. But, let me not compensate too much: it is still about liberalism. Indeed, James M. Buchanan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, is searching for the soul of classical liberalism:
"(The vision) of classical liberalism generally, is built on the central, and simple, notion that "we
can all be free." Adam Smith’s "simple system of natural liberty," even if only vaguely
understood, can enlighten the spirit, can create a soul that generates a coherence, a
unifying philosophical discipline, that brings order to an internal psyche that might
otherwise remain confused.
A motivating element is, of course, the individual’s desire for liberty from the
coercive power of others—an element that may be almost universally shared. But a
second element is critically important: the absence of desire to exert power over others.
In a real sense, the classical liberal stands in opposition to Thomas Hobbes, who
modeled persons as universal seekers of personal power and authority. But Hobbes
failed, himself, to share the liberal vision; he failed to understand that an idealized
structure of social interaction is possible in which no person exerts power over another.
In the idealized operation of an extended market order, each person confronts
a costless exit option in each market, thereby eliminating totally any discretionary
power of anyone with whom such a person might exchange. Coercion by another person
is drained out; individuals are genuinely "at liberty".
Of course, this characterization is an idealization of any social order that might
exist. But, as an ideal, such an imagined order can offer the exciting and normatively
relevant prospect of a world in which all participants are free to choose."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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25/12/2003
The road from hell...
Brad DeLong writes about the paradox of modern liberalism:
"How can one support the idea of an activist government when half the time that government will be run by malevolent or incompetent Republicans?"
To which Alex Tabarrok responds:
"I agree with but the change of one word. "Republicans" should be replaced with "politicians." Change that one word and you move from a naive, partisan view of the world to a principled, non-partisan and correct view. Note that it is not necessary to believe that every politician is a knave or even that half of them are. The core problem is that knaves can do much more harm than angels can do benefit."
Two things. I wonder about the other half of the time. Will government then be run by competent Republicans, uncompetent Democrats or competent Democrats? The first obviously can’t be true: Republicans are not runing the show all the time. And i don’t think Brad DeLong is implying the second. In that case all politicians are knaves and for DeLong the Republicans invariably seems to be the knaves and the Democrats the angels.
To which i would add a second thing. Not all that angels do is beneficial. Yes, they have good intentions but, as we all know, the road to hell...
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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25/12/2003
Our great Nation
The Nation reminds us that Colonel Gaddafi’s decision the come clean and renounce weapons of mass destruction is not the sole result of the actions of the Bush administration:
"Let’s not allow the Administration to neocon us into believing that Libya’s decision is the sole result of Bush’s war in Iraq. Instead, let’s use Libya’s example to call for inspections and reductions of WMD in all countries around the world, including here in the US."
This may be true, but the New York Times, a newspaper not known for it’s favourable treatment of neoconservatives, disagrees, and their are reports that Gaddafi indeed was frightened by the war in Iraq. And what about Iran? Would they be so forthcoming without American troups along it’s borders?
But a strange thing is happening at The Nation (well, maybe not that strange): while Bush can’t be credited for good news, he certainly can be criticized for bad things wich are happening for over two decades. For in this piece, Paul Krugman laments that while in the late seventies upward mobility was "a real experience for many people", it is not even a dream anymore. How could this be? For a large part, according to Krugman, because of public policy:
"Put it this way: Suppose that you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots. What would you do?
One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You’d also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you’d try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.
Meanwhile, on the spending side, you’d cut back on healthcare for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.
And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you’d do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you’d privatize government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees.
It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn’t it?"
Indeed, it sounds very familiar. It’s the way Krugman has been describing the public policies of G.W. Bush over and over again.
So when it’s good, then it is the result of ten years of diplomacy and the contribution of Bush is minimal. When it’s bad, then it is Bush’s fault, even when it is happening for almost 25 years.
Only at The Nation.
UPDATE: For a substantial critique of Krugman’s thesis, look here, or here.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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23/12/2003
Quote of the day
Christopher Hitchens:
"Three years ago, sympathizers of al-Qaida controlled the government of Afghanistan, heavily influenced the ruling circle in Saudi Arabia, and were in a good position to take over the Pakistani state from within. They were also being sought out for meetings by the regime in Baghdad. Now they have lost Afghanistan, are being hunted in Saudi Arabia, are being killed in the rat holes of Iraq, and stand little if any chance of seizing power in Islamabad."
Yes, we are winning the war against terror. Happy Christmas!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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21/12/2003
Bias
The BBC really is the Baatist Broadcasting Corporation:
"BBC bosses have banned reporters from calling tyrant Saddam Hussein a former dictator.
Instead, staff must refer to the barbaric mass murderer as "the deposed former President".(...)
Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who chairs the Indict group which has dossiers on the crimes of Saddam, his sons and henchmen, was astounded at the BBC’s stance."
On the other hand, Jacky D. points out that there are more then 500 instances on the website of the BBC where Augusto Pinochet is being reffered to as "a former dictator".
Why the difference? In what way is Pinochet different from Saddam? Well, the last one gassed it’s own people, started two wars against his neighbours, developed weapons of mass destruction...things Pinochet never did. In many ways Saddam was more brutal then Pinochet. And Pinochet produced "an economic miracle", while Iraq was economically destroyed by Saddam, even before the U.N. sanctions took place in 1991:
"Iraq seemed to be on the edge of sustained economic development in 1979. It was a nation of 12.8 million people with a per capita income well in excess of $10,000 in constant $US 1994. However, its economy was dependent on oil wealth and construction and infrastructure oriented with massive distortions in the state and agricultural sector.
By 1986, the worst year of the Iran-Iraq War in economic terms, Iraq’s per capita income was down to $2,174, and its population was up to 16.2 million.
By 1991, the last year for which we have hard data on the Iraqi economy in market terms, Iraq’s per capita income was down to $705, and its population was up to 17.9 million. Iraq’s GNP in constant $1994 had dropped from $48.3 billion in 1984 to $16.3 billion.
Iraq’s current per capita income is probably under $1,000. The World Bank estimates that its population will climb from 21.0 million in 1995 to 24.5 million in 2000, 28.4 million in 2005, and 32.5 million in 2010."
So again, why the difference? According to Norman Geras, a Marxist, but pro-war, and anti-Saddam:
"Pinochet was supported by the US; Saddam Hussein was, finally, taken down by them. It may not be the whole story, but I’d say it’s most of it."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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20/12/2003
A-ha!
A-ha! Battlestar Galactica is blijkbaar terug! Galactica was één van mijn favoriete science fiction series van eind jaren zeventig, begin jaren tachtig. De serie zag er veel moderner uit dan pakweg Star Trek en kan zelfs de vergelijking met Star Trek The Next Generation heel goed doorstaan. Hoofdrollen werden gespeeld door o.a. Lorne Green (yep, pa Cartwright) en Dirk Benedict (Starbuck, later beroemd geworden als Face in The A-Team). Om één of andere reden werd de serie door geen enkele zender herhaald. Jammer. Nu is er dus blijkbaar een nieuwe reeks, met nieuwe acteurs natuurlijk. Het basisthema is echter hetzelfde gebleven, en ook de cylons (robotten die uit zijn op de vernietiging van de mensheid) zijn opnieuw van de partij. Hopelijk komt de nieuwe reeks wel vlug op het scherm...ben alvast benieuwd. Intussen kan u hier een bespreking lezen van de pilootaflevering, want sommigen hebben de nieuwe Galactica blijkbaar al wel gezien.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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20/12/2003
Iraq’s weapons
Where did Saddam buy his weapons? The U.S.? Think again.
Parapundit has the figures.
UPDATE: Frans Groenendijk is not convinced.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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19/12/2003
Paul Bremer for president!
The New Yorker reports:
"Bremer speaks directly to Iraqis every week on television and radio. He also meets with dignitaries around the country. He is personally popular and is regarded as modest and hardworking; according to a recent Gallup poll, twice as many Baghdadis approve of him as disapprove. (President Bush, by contrast, has more detractors than supporters.)"
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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19/12/2003
The road to modernity
Michael Elliot has a nice column in Time about the road to modernization. According to Elliot, there are different ways of begin modern. Indeed, people who think that globalization is the same as Americanization are wrong. That is not what is happening, and it shouldn’t be happening. A country can become globally integrated and modern without taking over the whole gamut of American values:
"Not everyone wants Big Macs, 200 TV channels and the separation of church and state. Nations are capable of finding their own paths to modernity. That will be as true in Iraq as it has been in a village in the shadow of the White Mountains of western Crete. Americans need to get used to it."
I have one reservation though. I agree that Big Macs and 200 TV channels are not universal values (only American ones) of modernism, but the seperation of church and state?
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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17/12/2003
Iraq - The case for optimism
Edward at
Bonoboland is distressed by what he call’s the "height of stupidity" of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq. I think he is led astray by the natural tendency of the press to report too much bad news, while ignoring some genuine sign’s of progress in Iraq, progress which, i think, will continue now that Saddam has been captured, and the vast majority of Iraqi’s can now be certain that his regime will not be coming back. Edward links to an article with the ominous title "Hussein’s capture opens deep rifts". That may be true, but the rift was created by Saddam himself in the first place, by excluding almost all Iraqi’s except Sunni Arabs. And while the effect of the images of Saddam’s capture may enrage further his supporters (a dwindling minority, too small even to call it a resistance), many actions are being undertaken (with mixed succes to be sure) to close that rift. In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Democracy, Adeed Dawhisa, born in Iraq, and now a professor of political science in Miami, gives a balanced assesment of the situation in that country. (Thanks to Daniel Drezner for the pointer.)
First, it is widely of the mark to call the attacks against the U.S. "the Iraqi resistance". It’s worthwhile to quote Dawhisa here in full:
"Most of the attacks on coalition forces in fact have occurred in an area
that is geographically and demographically narrow. My analysis of U.S.
Casualties since the beginning of the occupation shows that more than
four out of five U.S. Deaths inflicted by hostile action took place in the
Sunni areas that cover parts of Baghdad and the territory to its north and
west. If one looks at the total numbers of attacks (nearly all of which,
every day, are "misses" that result in no harm to coalition forces and do
not make the news), one sees that more than 75 percent of them have
occurred in the towns north and west of Baghdad and on the roads linking
them, while fewer than 2 percent have taken place in Basra, the heavily
Shi’ite southern city with a population of 1.75 million. Taken together,
all these Sunni towns (including Tikrit, Ramadi, Fallujah, Baquba, Balad,
Taji, and Dhuluiya) contain no more than 1.5 million people, or about 6
percent of Iraq’s total population. More than three times as many coalition
soldiers have been killed in the area inhabited by this tiny segment
of the population, belonging mainly to tribes that filled the ranks of
Saddam’s security organs, than in the entire Shi’ite-dominated region of
southern Iraq, which is home to more than half of all Iraqis. Indeed, three
days after a November 12 suicide truck bombing that killed 19 Italian
members of the coalition forces—including 12 Carabinieri military-police
troops—and 8 Iraqi civilians in the southern city of Nasiriyah, local
people organized two large demonstrations, lofting placards that denounced
the attack as an outside plot to undermine the fraternal relations
between the Carabinieri and the townsfolk. The marchers laid wreaths of
flowers at what had been the gate of the Italian barracks.
In fact, the Sunni community as a whole might be excused for feeling
exasperated at seeing its religious affiliation associated constantly with
attacks on U.S. Troops. There is no evidence that the Sunni middle class
in Baghdad is involved in, or even supports, the violence in Iraq. And in
the northern city of Mosul, where more than a million Sunni Arabs live,
there are still considerably fewer attacks on U.S. Soldiers than in the
area between Baghdad and Tikrit.
In areas heavily peopled by Kurds and Shi’ites, who between them
constitute around four-fifths of the population of Iraq and predominate
across more than three-fifths of its land area, there has been much less
violence against coalition forces. The Kurds have allied themselves closely
with the United States, and were the only Iraqi community that joined the
coalition to fight Saddam. Since then, they have been vocal supporters of
the coalition presence, not even demanding a timetable for withdrawal.
The majority Shi’ites, for their part, do register more eagerness to see
the occupation end and full Iraqi sovereignty return, but they have been
adamant that the path to this goal should be a peaceful one. They generally
have been willing to give the United States the benefit of the doubt,
waiting for the CPA (the Coalition Provisional Authority, led by Paul Bremer) to make good on its promises to stabilize Iraq, set it
on the path of economic and political development, and then leave. The
community’s senior clerical leaders (known as the four marjas, they are
Ali al-Sistani, Muhamed Ishaq Fayadh, Muhamed Said al-Hakim, and
Bashir al-Najafi) have consistently counseled against confronting coalition
forces.Sistani, the most senior cleric with the largest following, has
issued a fatwa (religious opinion) that permits cooperation with the occupation
forces. Even the young clerical firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr has
stopped short of advocating violence in his anticoalition sermons."
Second, opinion polls indicate that the majority of Iraqi’s are not supporting actions against the coalition. In fact, the majority want the coalition to stay, at least for another year.
Third, the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) has not been a puppit of the Americans and it is following an autonomous course (within bounds of course). For instance,
"In early November 2003, the United
States and Turkey abandoned their painstakingly negotiated agreement
to send 10,000 Turkish troops to Iraq after the IGC publicly
voiced unanimous opposition to the deal, citing the inevitability of
friction between the Turks and the Iraqi population."
Another example: three Arab companies were rewarded by the IGC with contracts to build mobile telephone networks with European instead of American technology without interference of the CPA and Paul Bremer.
Fourth, civil society is emerging, in a country which has been for decades dominated by the state. There is "the mushrooming of local self-governing councils", selected by peacefull means, and sometimes with the help of the coalition. Newspapers are increasing from five under Saddam (and controlled by the Baath), to more then 150. The first newspaper to appear in Baghdad after the war was that of the Communist party by the way, and there is a communist in the governing counsil. (And can anyone give me another instance where the U.S. is helping communists INTO the government, instead of out?) Political parties are being founded in droves:
"There are at
least twenty, and by some estimates more than a hundred. They run the
ideological gamut from left to right, and represent secular as well as
religious concerns. Organizationally, some are developing a national
reach with offices in more than one city, while others are focused on
building support on narrower ethnic or tribal bases. Interestingly, many
of these parties have also begun to build alliances, coalescing around a
common policy or political demand. One example is the coordination
among leftist parties in highlighting the plight of the unemployed.
Another is the Wafd coalition, which was created in September by parties
and other groupings that oppose the IGC. These groups quickly
formed a 30-member committee to explain to Arab and European countries
the group’s concerns and its objections to IGC and U.S. policies.
This expression of opposition peacefully and within the democratic
"rules of the game" is the kind of sign one would hope to see if democracy
in Iraq is to have a future."
So indeed there is a case for optimism, underscored by the fact that the majority of the Iraqi’s themselves are optimistic. Two-thirds by the way think that the removal of Saddam was worth the hardships that they have endured since his fall. The fact that he is now in prison and has publicly been humiliated before those millions of Iraqi’s he denied justice to, will give the vast majority that want to build a more democratic Iraq even more reasons for optimism.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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17/12/2003
Will Bush be elected again? (Oh horror!)
Will the capture of Saddam increase the re-election chances of Bush?
I surely hope so, a president, whatever his faults (and they are many with Bush), who wipes two of the most vicious regimes - Saddam and the Taliban - of the face of the earth, deserves to be re-elected.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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16/12/2003
Now here’s an interesting idea
Now that Saddam has been captured speculation continues about the question of violence. Is this the fatal blow to the resitance against the Americans and the new Iraqi regime, or will violence increase further? Instead of speculating about the problem, maybe we should think a little more about solutions. Economist Reuven Brenner does just that and proposes a kind of privatization of oil revenues:
"execute an idea that has been in circulation for a while, modeled after the Alaska public trust fund, which would offer each and every Iraqi a fraction of oil revenues. The other portion would be invested and could not be spent without well-defined voting procedures. This arrangement would ensure that people had an immediate stake in the new Iraqi system, and incentives to both prevent sabotage and cooperate. The oil revenues could be managed by an international trust fund."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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14/12/2003
Evidence for link Saddam - Al Qaeda?
Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
By Con Coughlin
Iraq’s coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.
Details of Atta’s visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal’s base in Baghdad.
In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".
The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.
Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq’s ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.
"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam’s involvement with al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."
Although Atta is believed to have been resident in Florida in the summer of 2001, he is known to have used more than a dozen aliases, and intelligence experts believe he could easily have slipped out of the US to visit Iraq.
Abu Nidal, who was responsible for the failed assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London in 1982, was based in Baghdad for more than two decades.
UPDATE: Probably not.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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13/12/2003
Quote of the day
Amartya Sen on the market:
"In recent discussions, the focus in assessing the market mechanism has tended to be on results it ultimately generates, such as the incomes or utilities yielded by markets. This is not a negligible issue (...). But the more immediate case for the freedom of market transaction lies in the basic importance of that freedom itself. We have good reasons to buy and sell, to exchange, and to seek lives that can flourish on the basis of transactions. To deny that freedom in general would be in itself a major failing of society."
(Via Crooked Timber)
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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13/12/2003
Huh?
From The Guardian:
"While the digital divide is narrowing within richer countries - about half of all households in the UK now have access - it is widening between the industrialised and developing worlds mainly because of the slow pace of change in the latter. About 90% of global internet users come from industrialised countries even though they have less than 20% of the world’s population. Africa, which makes up 19% of the world population, is home to only 1% of internet users. The potential of satellite and wireless links offers Africa the prospect of leapfrogging over a whole generation of fixed-link telecommunications infrastructure - but little progress seems to have been made despite ambitious plans."
But, dear journalists of The Guardian, the gap isn’t widening between rich and poor, it is narrowing! Progess, in large parts of the developing world, is actually quite impressive. (Look here for more.)
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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13/12/2003
Bush versus the neoconservatives
It seems that the neoconservatives of The Weekly Standard were wrong about Bush. He will not reverse the decision about the Iraqi contracts, defending it instead:
"The taxpayers understand why it makes sense for countries that risk lives to participate in the contracts in Iraq (...) It’s very simple. Our people risk their lives. Coalition, friendly coalition folks risk their lives, and, therefore, the contracting is going to reflect that."
We all know that Bush has a simple mind. But his principled stand is to be admired. Indeed, why should countries - like Belgium - that refuse to send troops and take risks, be allowed to profit from the money of the American taxpayer? Worse, why should a country like Russia, that refuse to do something about the Iraqi debts, be allowed to profit again?
Earlier Paul Wolfowitz provided a bogus reason for the exclusion of countries that are not part of the coalition of the willing. It is definitely not about American security interests. But Bush provided the right reason: those countries have no right to the U.S. taxpayers money! Simple, but true.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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13/12/2003
Something to ignore
Bush apparently has taken measures to curb air pollution via a market-friendly but very effective cap and trade system. Airborne mercury will be restricted for the first time. The issue was ignored by the big media, according to Gregg Easterbrook:
"All in all, Bush’s announcement sounds progressive and important. So how did the media play it? The New York Times, which has had the incredible, super-ultra menace of Midwest power plants on page one perhaps a dozen times since Bush took office, put the plan to end the problem on page A24. The Times story was a small box cryptically headlined. "E.P.A. Drafts New Rules for Emissions From Power Plants." The Washington Post put the story on page two but under the headline, "E.P.A. Aims to Change Pollution Rules," suggesting something ominous, adding the subhead, "Utilities Could Buy Credits From Cleaner-Operating Power Plants," neglecting to add that credits could be purchased only if the result was an overall decline in pollution.
The proper placement for this story was page one--where the anti-Bush environmental stories always run--and the proper headline was, BUSH ORDERS DRAMATIC POLLUTION REDUCTION. But you didn’t see that, did you?"
Read the rest.
(Via Andrew Sullivan)
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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12/12/2003
Getting results...
This can be the result of blogging :
"No blogging today -- and it’s the blog’s fault. Follow this chain of events:
Back in May, I blogged about the Center for Global Development’s Ranking the Rich, an effort to create, "an index that measures 21 developed countries on a plethora of policies that help or harm poor nations."
Which led to my first essay in Tech Central Station.
Which led to me getting asked to be on (the Center’s) Board of Advisors for future revisions to the index.
Which leads me to fly to (Washington) DC and back to go to a board meeting today."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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12/12/2003
American economic outlook still improving
Upbeat news from the economic growth front:
"Revising its year-end economic forecast sharply upward, The Conference Board today projected that real GDP growth will hit 5.7% next year, making 2004 the best year economically in the last 20 years.
The forecast, by Conference Board Chief Economist Gail Fosler, expects worker productivity, which set a 20-year record in the third quarter, to rise at a healthy 3.6% next year. That would follow a gain of 4.3% this year."
And their is good news for Europe too:
"The Conference Board forecast notes that as the U.S. economy bounces back, so is Europe, although growth will be subdued compared to most other major parts of the world."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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12/12/2003
About friends and enemies
Two neo-conservatives, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, want the Pentagon’s decision on the Iraqi contracts te be reversed:
"President Bush, we suspect, is going to overrule the Pentagon’s attempt to exclude from the bidding for Iraq reconstruction contracts certain countries that have opposed U.S. Policy in Iraq. He might as well do it sooner rather than later, so as to minimize the diplomatic damage done by the Pentagon’s heavy-handed and counterproductive action.
We hold no brief for the Chirac, Schroeder, or Putin governments. We are also very much in favor of finding ways to work more closely with other governments -- such as those of Britain, Spain and Poland -- who have courageously stood with us, and who hold the promise of continuing to be more helpful to us. We have even been critical of the Bush Administration for a certain lack of imagination in finding ways to work constructively with these friendly governments. But this particular effort by the Pentagon to reward friends and punish enemies is stupid, and should be abandoned."
I find the last sentence a little awkward. France, Russia and Germany are not America’s enemies. They happen to disagree about a lot of things, but that doesn’t make you enemies. Besides, for the future of Iraq it is vital that especially Russia and France can be convinced to forgive Iraq’s foreign debt. But i don’t think you can convince them by considering them "enemies", and neither by excluding them from these contracts (the importance of wich has been vastly overblown, by the way). So Kristol and Kagan are right to criticize their neo-conservative friend Wolfowitz. If you want the international community to be involved you can’t exclude the overwhelming part of it. But neither is it right to call friends who happen to disagree with you enemies.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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11/12/2003
Het Vlaams milieu gaat er niet op achteruit....
De kwaliteit van het milieu in Vlaanderen blijft achteruitgaan, zo meldt VRT-Teletekst. Helaas
gaat de kwaliteit van de berichtgeving op dit nieuwsonderdeel van onze openbare zender ook zienderogen
achteruit. Het bericht concentreert zich sterk op ons energieverbruik en meldt dat we steeds verder van de Kyoto-norm verwijderd geraken. Het enige positieve punt is dat de dioxine-uistoot verminderd is. Maar als we naar het Mina-rapport, waarop de VRT zich baseert, zelf bekijken, dan komt een heel ander beeld naar voren:
- Huishoudelijk afval: 3 kg minder dan in 2001
- Bedrsijfsafval stijgt niet sneller dan het bbp
- Energiegebruik is gestegen (1990-2002), maar minder snel dan de economische groei, de energie-afhankelijkheid is dan ook gedaald
- Totaal watergebruik is met bijna 15% gedaald
- Grondstoffengebruik is met 9% gestegen t.o.v. 2001
- Ruimtegebruik per inwoner neemt toe
- Uitstoot broeikasgassen is gestegen
- Driekwart van de afgesproken reductie van verzurende stoffen in de lucht is bereikt. Gezondheidsdrempels worden nog maar zelden overschreden
- De instustriele belasting van het oppervlaktewater is sterk gedaald, idem dito voor de huishoudelijke belasting (geen daling bij de landbouw)
- Voor de vierde jaar op rij is er een daling in het aantal overschrijdingen van de nitraatnormen in de landbouw
- De algemene toestand van de vissen in de waterlopen gaat er op achteruit (maar in de grotere rivieren verbetert deze blijkbaar)
- De kwaliteit van de bodem (nutriënten) is verbeterd
- De emissies van de zware metalen naar het oppervlaktewater dalen
- De milieudruk van chemische bestrijdingsmiddelen neemt af
- De geluidsemissie in vlaanderen neemt af
- Per eenheid energetische output wordt er minder vervuilende stoffen uitgestoten
- De bevolking sorteert beter
Een aantal negatieve punten dus, maar ook een hele reeks positieve evoluties, die door de VRT duidelijk worden miskend. Door de obsessie met de Kyoto-norm wordt over het hoofd gezien dat er het Vlaamse milieu er op een aantal vlakken wel degelijk sterk op vooruitgaat.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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10/12/2003
U.S. Excludes France, Russia and Germany (and Belgium) from bidding for Iraqi contracts
The U.S. Has blocked Iraqi war opponents such as France, Russia and Germany from bidding for contracts to rebuild the country. Germany has called the exclusions unacceptable and the EU has already announced to investigate if this ban is not a violation of WTO rules. The contracts are worth 18,6 billion dollars. According to a directive from Paul Wolfowitz the exclusions are necessary for security reasons. So contracts are limited to companies from the US, Irak, the coalition partners and countries that have contributed troops. You can find the directive here.
I’ve just gone throught the list of countries that may bid for the contracts. Belgium is not on the list, but I can’t see why the bidding of Belgian companies would be dangerous for American security interests. Turkey on the other hand is on the list, while it’s support for the war was very lukewarm, to say the least. Maybe it’s a reward for not sending the army into Iraq.
It’s laudable that Wolfowitz explicitly includes companies from Iraq itself. He want’s to make Iraq’s stakeholders in the rebuilding of their country and that’s of course a good thing. But the exclusion of many countries is a rather strange way of expanding international cooperation, a goal twice mentioned in Wolfowitz’ directive. It’s also stupid, according to Matt Welch:
"While theoretically satisfying, this is stupid for at least three reasons: 1) It screws over the Iraqi people and the American taxpayer, by making them pay above-market prices for reconstruction. 2) Assuming that it is remotely possible that the United States might some day be wrong about something it cares about, the ban incentivizes allies to swallow any potentially legitimate objections to American action, thereby stunting the flow of information. 3) It confuses companies with countries, which is a concept that should make true free traders wince."
I’m not sure about his first argument. Companies from potentially 62 countries are doing the bidding. So there should be enough contenders to make the bidding process competitive enough to bring prices down, provided the process itself is honest of course (no collusion).
But his other arguments make sense to me.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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10/12/2003
Doing the right thing...
We all know that Bush’s record on free trade is not bright, but at least he did the right thing
after the WTO ruled that the steel tariffs were illegal. He removed them and so avoided a trade war.
And at the same time he (unintentionally) strengthened the World Trade Organisation:
"(...) Mr. Bush’s decision to comply fully with the ruling helped establish the trade organization’s authority, showing that even the world’s largest economic power, and the nation that spurred its creation, had to bend to its rulings."
Would it be better if one of the current Democratic contenders for the presidency were president? Here is David Broders take:
"The Democrats had a free shot at Bush for inconsistency, and most took it. But every comment I saw from them said or implied that they would not have responded as Bush did when the World Trade Organization ruled that the tariff was unjustified and European nations threatened to slap $2.2 billion of retaliatory levies on U.S. products. The party whose last president fought against protectionism and for international agreements to liberalize trade has moved in the other direction."
So in a way i’m glad Bush is the president now. Otherwise we may have had a trade war with protectionists
countermeasures by Europe, and the authority of the WTO seriously undermined, if not destroyed. That would be bad for developing countries as the rule of the WTO would be replaced by the rule of the jungle. Yes, Bush did the only right thing.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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10/12/2003
No weapons of mass destruction, only mass graves....
We don’t have to find weapons of mass destructions. There were reasons enough for being supportive of regime change:
"Saddam Hussein’s government may have executed 61,000 Baghdad residents, a number significantly higher than previously believed, according to a survey obtained by The Associated Press.
The bloodiest massacres of Saddam’s 23-year presidency occurred in Iraq’s Kurdish north and Shiite Muslim south, but the Gallup Baghdad Survey data indicates the brutality extended strongly into the capital as well.
The survey obtained Monday, which the polling firm planned to release on Tuesday, asked 1,178 Baghdad residents in August and September whether a member of their household had been executed by Saddam’s regime. According to Gallup, 6.6 percent said yes.
The polling firm took metropolitan Baghdad’s population--6.39 million--and average household size--6.9 people--to calculate that 61,000 people were executed during Saddam’s rule. Past estimates were in the low tens of thousands. Most are believed to have been buried in mass graves.
The U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq has said that at least 300,000 people are buried in mass graves in Iraq. Human rights officials put the number closer to 500,000, and some Iraqi political parties estimate more than 1 million were executed.
Without exhumations of those graves, it is impossible to confirm a figure. Scientists told The Associated Press during a recent investigation that they have confirmed 41 mass graves on a list of suspected sites that currently includes 270 locations.
(Thanks to Harry Hatchett for the pointer.)
And Saddam’s loyalists are still killing innocent Iraqi’s. So when i read this from Peter Gowan, in the New Left Review:
"For the moment, resistance to American power lies in the alley-ways of Fallujah and Baghdad, not the lobbies of the Upper East Side."
I can only feel disgust. And I think G.W. Bush was more on the mark when he called the resistance fighters Gowan is talking about "thugs and murderers".
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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10/12/2003
Relax...
Climate change is hot again in this cold winter month. Almost 200 countries are convened in Milan to
discuss the problems of global warming. Have the 4.000 delegates reason to worry? Ronald Bailey tell
them to relax:
"Besides the climate computer models, are there other ways to peer into Earth’s climate future? Yes—by extrapolating what we know has occurred in the past to the future. Just consider the trends implied by three temperature records: the satellite temperature records by University of Alabama at Huntsville climatologist John Christy; the those same satellite records as recently reanalyzed by Remote Sensing Systems scientist Frank Wentz; and the surface temperature record compiled by the IPCC. What do they reveal?
According to the somewhat spotty surface temperature record, average temperatures are increasing by about 0.17 degree centigrade per decade. The Wentz satellite data suggests an increase of 0.15 degrees per decade and Christy’s data find temperatures increasing at about 0.074 degree centigrade per decade. Christy insists that his data have been independently confirmed by comparison with highly accurate weather balloon data. What he has done is compare his satellite measurements with measurements made by weather balloons at the same time and place. Christy finds that his satellite measurements and the balloon measurements match very closely.
Extrapolating the surface temperatures yields an increase of 1.7 degrees centigrade by 2100. Wentz’ trend would result in a 1.5 degree centigrade increase and Christy’s would be 0.74 degrees—all at the bottom of the range of increases identified by the IPCC. "We might see a degree of warming over the next century. None of those temperature increases is going to cause much of a catastrophe," says Christy. Even the alarmist report from the German Advisory Council on Global Change concluded that the world can tolerate a rise of up to 2 degrees centigrade over pre-industrial levels.
So perhaps the delegates in Milan can just relax."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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9/12/2003
Waarom zijn de experts tegen ggo’s? Omdat het geen experts zijn.
VRT-Teletekst berichtte gisteren dat een groep Europese deskundigen het op de markt brengen van genetisch gemanipuleerd graan hadden afgewezen. Een grote overwinning zo leek het wel voor de tegenstanders van dergelijke ggo’s. Als nu ook al deskundigen zeggen dat dergelijk voedsel onveilig is...
Maar het bericht meldde niet wie die groep deskundigen nu precies waren, om welke redenen het in de handel brengen werd geweigerd (gezondheidsredenen, gevaar voor milieu...), noch of er werd gestemd en wat het resultaat van die stemming was. Een heel éénzijdig artikel kortom.
Gelukkig is er de onvolprezen De Morgen om ons één en andere duidelijker te maken. Gezien de nogal huiverachtige houding van de krant tegenover ggo’s niet verwonderlijk dat over de beslissing (het advies eigenlijk) werd bericht. Het artikel is - De Morgen zij geprezen - evenwel zeer objectief en evenwichtig. Wat blijkt?
Het gaat om een groep van 15 deskundigen, één vertegenwoordiger per lidstaat. Het zijn dus zogenaamde experts, maar wel aangeduid door de lidstaten, en blijkbaar nogal redelijk schatplichtig aan hun eigen land. Zes deskundigen stemden voor goedkeuring, zes tegen, en drie onthielden zich (waaronder ons land). Meldt De Morgen:
"Het dossier verhuist nu naar het niveau van de ministers. Meer dan waarschijnlijk zullen de landen die weigerachtig staan tegenover ggo’s, daar ook dwarsliggen."
Ook...de landen die weigerachtig staat zullen OOK bij de ministers dwarsliggen. Ze lagen dus al dwars in de groep van experten. Een aanwijzing dat werd gestemd volgens de positie die desbetreffende land inneemt in dit thema, en niet op basis van de merites van het gewas in kwestie.
Het artikel in De Morgen stelt overigens dat het product volledig veilig werd bevonden! Waarom stemden zes "experts" dan tegen?
Simpel, omdat dat het moratorium op ggo’s zou worden opgeheven, en dat willen sommige landen nu eenmaal niet.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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9/12/2003
Revealed: the Iraqi colonel who told MI6 that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes
Revealed: the Iraqi colonel who told MI6 that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes
By Con Coughlin
An Iraqi colonel who commanded a front-line unit during the build-up to the war in Iraq has revealed how he passed top secret information to British intelligence warning that Saddam Hussein had deployed weapons of mass destruction that could be used on the battlefield against coalition troops in less than 45 minutes.
Lt-Col al-Dabbagh, 40, who was the head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the western desert, said that cases containing WMD warheads were delivered to front-line units, including his own, towards the end of last year.
He said they were to be used by Saddam’s Fedayeen paramilitaries and units of the Special Republican Guard when the war with coalition troops reached "a critical stage".
The containers, which came from a number of factories on the outskirts of Baghdad, were delivered to the army by the Fedayeen and were distributed to the front-line units under cover of darkness.
In an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, Col al-Dabbagh said that he believed he was the source of the British Government’s controversial claim, published in September last year in the intelligence dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes.
"I am the one responsible for providing this information," said the colonel, who is now working as an adviser to Iraq’s Governing Council.
He also insisted that the information contained in the dossier relating to Saddam’s battlefield WMD capability was correct. "It is 100 per cent accurate," he said after reading the relevant passage.
The devices, which were known by Iraqi officers as "the secret weapon", were made in Iraq and designed to be launched by hand-held rocket-propelled grenades. They could also have been launched sooner than the 45-minutes claimed in the dossier.
"Forget 45 minutes," said Col al-Dabbagh "we could have fired these within half-an-hour."
Local commanders were told that they could use the weapons only on the personal orders of Saddam. "We were told that when the war came we would only have a short time to use everything we had to defend ourselves, including the secret weapon," he said.
The only reason that these weapons were not used, said Col al-Dabbagh, was because the bulk of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam. "The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight," he said.
"If the army had fought for Saddam Hussein and used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences."
Col al-Dabbagh, who was recalled to Baghdad to work at Iraq’s air defence headquarters during the war itself, believes that the WMD have been hidden at secret locations by the Fedayeen and are still in Iraq. "Only when Saddam is caught will people talk about these weapons," he said.
During the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, said that the information contained in the intelligence dossier relating to the 45-minute claim had come from a single "established and reliable" source serving in the Iraqi armed forces. Privately British intelligence officers have claimed that they believe the original source was killed during the war.
Dr Kelly killed himself last July after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC radio report claiming that the Labour Government had included the 45-minute claim against the wishes of MI6 to "sex up" the intelligence dossier.
Col al-Dabbagh, who spied for the Iraqi National Accord (INA), a London-based exile group, for several years before the war, said, however, that he provided several reports to British intelligence on Saddam’s plans to deploy WMD from early 2002 onwards.
The INA, which was made up of retired and serving Iraqi officers and Ba’ath party officials, is known to have enjoyed a close relationship with MI6 and America’s Central Intelligence Agency.
Dr Ayad Allawi, the head of the INA who is now a prominent member of the Governing Council in Baghdad, confirmed that he had passed Col al-Dabbagh’s reports on Saddam’s WMD to both British and American intelligence officers "sometime in the spring and summer of 2002".
Apart from providing intelligence on Saddam’s WMD programme, Col al-Dabbagh also provided details of Iraq’s troop and air defence deployments before the war.
Although he gave details of Iraq’s battlefield WMD capability, he said that he had no knowledge of any plans by Saddam to use missiles to attack British bases in Cyprus and other Nato targets.
In the build-up to the conflict, Tony Blair was criticised by intelligence officials for giving the impression that Saddam had developed ballistic missiles that could carry WMD warheads and hit targets such as Israel and Britain’s military bases in Cyprus.
But Col al-Dabbagh said that he doubted that Iraq under Saddam had this capability. "I know nothing about this. My information was only about what we could do on the battlefield."
Col al-Dabbagh, who received two death threats from Saddam loyalists days after his interview with the Telegraph, said that he was willing to travel to London to give evidence to the Hutton inquiry. "I was there and I knew what Saddam was doing before the war," he said.
An official close to the Hutton inquiry said: "What Mr Dabbagh has to say sounds very interesting and it is certainly new evidence that we will want to look at."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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7/12/2003
Wal-Mart invades Mexico
From Tyler Cowen:
"Wal-Mart is now the largest private employer in Mexico, with over 100,000 workers on its payroll there. Only the United States has more Wal-Mart outlets (3,499) than does Mexico (633), Britain is next with 266 outlets. Last year Wal-Mart did $11 billion of business a year in Mexico, more than the entire tourism industry. That is two percent of Mexican gdp, about the same as the percentage in the U.S. The influence of Wal-Mart alone has lowered Mexico’s inflation rate (...)
A Wal-Mart cashier in Mexico makes about $1.50 an hour. This may not sound generous, but a significant portion of the country does not make that much in a day. Wal-Mart is also a boon to poor and rural Mexicans, who can afford to buy more at the store’s low prices, or who receive goods that were otherwise unavailable or required a trip to Mexico City. If you are looking for an example of how globalization benefits the world’s poor, go no further than Wal-Mart."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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7/12/2003
Bridging the digital divide
The Digital Divide between rich and poor countries is narrowing, according to a new report from the International Telecommunications Union. Telephone networks are developing rapidly. Total teledensity (fixed and mobile networks) in developing countries has grown more during the last decade then in the entire period before 1990. "A standout is East Asia (which includes China), where total teledensity levels in 2002 were more than 24 times higher than ten years prior."
In fact, there are sometimes bigger digital divides within developing countries then between them and the rich countries:
"In Chile, 93 per cent of large businesses have Internet access, higher than the European Union average. But the corresponding figure in small Chilean firms is only 37 per cent. While Mexico’s top secondary schools provide one computer for every 12 students—better than Germany, where the figure is one to 14—the corresponding ratio for Mexico’s bottom quartile of schools is 59 students for every computer. Government access to ICTs—the sector where indicators are least standardized and available—shows similar disparities. In Peru, 81 per cent of central government agencies have access to the Internet while only 21 per cent of local government offices have such access."
The report is going to be widely read at the World Summit on the Information Society of wich phase one will take place this week in Geneva. Some developing countries are asking for financial aid for telecommunications intrastructure, a kind of solidarity fund. But this fund is probably unnecessary, according to one of the authors of the report. Not only is the digital divide narrowing, it is probably smaller then it was thought to be in the first place.
Indeed, many poor countries are digitally developing on their own. Not because they are getting money, but because they are reforming. Privatising state telecom companies, introducing competition (so that alternatives are available) and fighting corruption. And introducing open financial systems so that the poor can get access to much needed financial means. Consider Bangladesh:
"Bangladesh, with a per capita GDP of $1,570, has had annual cellular growth of nearly 150%, in part because of programs like the Grameen Bank’s Village Phone, which loans a phone, collateral free, to women in Bangladeshi villages, who in turn resell the service to their neighbors. This is double leverage, as it not only increases the number of phones in use, but also increases the number of users per phone."
So do indeed give aid. But not by throwing money away. Help the poor countries develop financial markets instead.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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6/12/2003
Michael Moore is a liar
Michael Moore, maker of the award-winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine" and author of the hugely succesfull books "Stupid White Men" and "Dude, where’s my country", is a liar. Just two of his many lies and distortions:
"Moore established his reputation for playing fast and loose with the truth in his first film, the 1989 documentary "Roger and Me," centering on General Motors layoffs in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. As the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael wrote at the time, he manipulated the chronology of his film, implying that certain events were a response to GM’s large 1986 layoffs when in fact they had occurred years before."
"Moore criticizes the 2003 Bush tax cut for reducing revenue to the states. As one example, he writes, "Take the kids in Oregon, whose schools were shut down early this year because they ran out of tax money." (page 160) While Moore makes it appear as though the 2003 Bush tax cut shut down Oregon’s schools, Oregon actually passed a law in May 2003 decoupling its state income tax system from the federal government’s, insuring that the 2003 tax cut would have no impact on the state’s budget. Moreover, as an article from the June 8 New York Times Magazine - one of Moore’s own sources - notes, Oregon voters had rejected a referendum earlier in the year that would have raised taxes to pay for schools and other spending."
Many Moore are found here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Quite impressive. Keep it in mind when you want to read his books.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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6/12/2003
Spooky science
Science can be very interesting. From The Economist Technology Quarterly:
"Lift your left hand. Did you know that your brain was preparing for that movement a full half-second before it actually took place? Even more spookily, your mind knew wich hand it was going to lift before you made the conscious decision to lift it."
And now computer scientist are trying to "use" this phenomemon to develop mechanisms to control computers by thought. Mind-reading computers. Like i said, science can be very interesting indeed.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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6/12/2003
Hit, hit, hit and then run....
There are a lot of interesting posts on Hit and Run:
- According to a newly declassified transcript the U.S., and Henry Kissinger in particular, gave the green light to the Argentine junta’s brutal dirty war of 1976–83. Hit and Run links to an article about it and to the transcript itself. Pretty damaging for Kissinger.
As Brad DeLong would say (a little naive), Americans are supposed to be the good guys. They still are i think, by and large, in Irak, they weren’t in Argentine in the seventies.
Kissinger, by the way, was not a big supporter of regime change in Irak. In fact, we can see a consistent pattern here: Kissinger is almost everywhere supportive of dictators (Argentine, Indonesia...) and against removing them (Saddam, Milosevic...). Luckily, G.W. Bush is no Henry Kissinger.
Repugnant.
- The Lancet wants to ban smoking everywhere. It’s a disease and ought to be criminalized. Repugnant. Says Jacob Sullum:
"In other words, since cigarette smoking is a disease, we should make it a crime. The best way to help those poor tobacco junkies is to put them in jail. Someday they’ll thank us--just like all those pot smokers who are grateful when the police guide them back to the straight and narrow. Or should I say, cure them?"
- There is a link with Richard Perle concerning the Boeing aircraft deal:
"Richard Perle, a prominent Pentagon adviser, lobbied on behalf of Boeing’s bid for a controversial $18bn government contract a year after the aerospace company made a $20m investment in the venture capital fund he runs. (...)Mr Perle, a former Reagan-era assistant defence secretary, is considered one of the most influential civilian members of Washington’s defence establishment. He was appointed in 2001 by Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, to chair the Defence Policy Board, a group of former military and policy experts who meet regularly with Mr Rumsfeld and top Pentagon officials. In August, Mr Perle co-authored an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing in favour of a deal in which the Air Force would lease 100 767 aircraft refuelling tankers from Boeing. The piece was published at a time when the deal was under intense attack by critics who claimed the tankers were unnecessary and the deal too expensive. Mr Perle and Thomas Donnelly, both members of the American Enterprise Institute think- tank, wrote that a "special government green-eyeshade mentality" was holding up a crucial deal. Mr Perle did not disclose that Boeing had committed to invest $20m in his venture capital fund, Trireme Partners, in mid-2002. The investment marked one of the largest early stakes taken in the fund by a corporate partner."
Perle denies the charges of course. But if they were true: repugnant!
- Finally, Nick Gillespie links to an article from Arnold Kling where he argues that libertarians will have a hard time finding a presidential candidate to their liking. The current president’s record is quite bad concerning big goverment and free trade. But his Democratic counterparts are no better: Howard Dean, for instance, came out in favor of re-regulation of utilities and other business. And Richard Gephardt is notoriously anti-free-trade. So Kling sticks with Joe Lieberman:
"Columnist Walter Shapiro noted that "aside from the brave and lonely free-trade advocacy of Joe Lieberman, all the White House hopefuls have embraced some form of protectionism." It is particularly brave and lonely in a party where trade unions are both protectionist and powerful."
So it is unlikely that Lieberman will win the nomination. What can i say? No, it’s not repugnant of course, but it’s surely depressing.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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2/12/2003
Zot Louike
Louis Tobback in De Morgen, over het verschil tussen links en rechts in de politiek:
"Wie durft er vandaag nog zeggen dat Al Gore en George Bush dezelfden zijn, zoals dat voor de Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezingen bon ton was? Zouden de Verenigde Staten de Kyoto-afspraken hebben opgeblazen met Gore? Zou er oorlog geweest zijn in Irak met Gore?" (...)
Ik! Wat Kyoto betreft, toen de vorige president Clinton het Kyoto-verdrag voorlegde aan de Amerikaanse Senaat werd het met 75 tegen 0 verworpen. Vijvenzeventig tegen nul! Dus niet alleen alle Republikeinen, maar ook alle Democraten, de partij van Gore, spraken zich uit tegen Kyoto! Het is dus hoogst onwaarschijnlijk dat onder Gore de V.S zich zonder meer hadden geschikt naar het Kyoto-verdrag.
De oorlog in Irak dan. Tijdens de verkiezingscampagne in de V.S. kwam de oorlogsretoriek in feite van Gore en niet van Bush. Bush vond dat de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek integendeel meer bescheiden moest worden. Gore steunde overigens lange tijd de Amerikaanse politiek ten opzichte van Irak. Pas toen het begon mis te lopen, keerde hij zijn kar. In de laatste twee jaar van de regering Clinton, toen Gore vice-president was, dropte de VS (samen met Groot-Brittannië) in totaal 2.000 bommen en raketten op Irak. Met dit verschil dat Saddam gewoon bleef zitten en verder ging met het tiranniseren van het Iraakse volk. Hoe dan ook was de kans inderdaad reëel dat er met Gore oorlog zou zijn geweest in Irak. In elk geval zou hij zo goed als zeker het beleid van Clinton van de laatste jaren hebben verdergezet: het bestoken en bombarderen van Irak zonder enig resultaat. Het minste wat je van Bush kan zeggen is dat hij de tiran verjaagd heeft.
Ach, ik vind het heel jammer dat Bush president is van Amerika. Hij geeft linkse politici als Tobback de ideale gelegenheid om heel rechts verdacht te maken. Tegen alle feiten in overigens.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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1/12/2003
"An Indigenous World"
Mosés Naím, editor of the excellent magazine Foreign Policy, wonders why indigenous groups has
gained so much political influence over the last decades. His answer? Globalization.
"(...)the fact remains that globalization has also brought indigenous peoples powerful allies, a louder voice that can be
heard internationally, and increased political influence at home. More fundamentally, globalization’s positive impact on
indigenous peoples is also a surprising and welcome rejoinder to its role as a homogenizer of cultures and habits. When
members of the Igorot indigenous tribe in northern Philippines and the Brunca tribe from Costa Rica gather in Geneva,
their collaboration helps to extend the survival of their respective ways of life—even if they choose to compare notes
over a Quarter Pounder in one of that city’s many McDonalds. In short, globalization’s complexity is such that its results
are less preordained and obvious than what is usually assumed. As the Maori, the Mayagnas, and the Tlicho know, it
can also be a force that empowers the poor, the different, and the local."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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1/12/2003
Libertarians against Bush
Libertarians, those people who, like me, want smaller government, are distinctly unhappy with president Bush. He promised smaller government, and indeed, according to some on the left like Paul Krugman, is definitely trying to "starve the beast". But instead the beast is only getting bigger (of course, Krugman still could be right in the long run, but in the long run…). And this libertarians don’t like:
"Given a choice between big-government liberalism and big-government conservatism, the
leave-us-alone voters might decide that voting isn’t worth the trouble."
Says David Boaz, executive vice-president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. And Boaz cites another libertarian, also from the Cato Institute, about the Bush energy bill:
"three parts corporate welfare and one part cynical politics . . . a smorgasbord of handouts and subsidies for virtually every energy lobby in Washington."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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1/12/2003
Quote of the day
Paul Krugman:
"(...) over the past 25 years more people have seen greater material progress then ever
before in history. That’s something to celebrate."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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30/11/2003
Rethinking Camelot (part II)
Hitchens again:
"The biographers and archivists have done most of the relevant job of reporting and disclosing, and what they have reported and disclosed is a president frantically "high" on pills of all kinds (that’s when he was not alarmingly "low" for the same reason), a president quick on the draw and willing to solicit Mafia hit men for his foreign policy, a president willing to risk nuclear war to save his own face; a president who bugged his own Oval Office, a president who used the executive mansion as a bordello, and a president whose name we might never have learned if not for the fanatical determination of his father to purchase him a political career. If a tithe of these things were really true of George W. Bush, Howard Dean might claim he was on to something."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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29/11/2003
"Double Helix" Watson and Frankenstein
Tyler Cowen reads a lot, and let the visitors of his weblog, read with him. Here he quotes James Watson (the Watson of Watson and Crick, discoverers of the double helix) about gmo’s. It’s worth reproducing in full:
"...the GM [genetically modified] food controversy is a feature of societies for which food is not a life-and-death issue. In India, where people literally starve to death...up to 60 percent of fruit grown in hill regions rots before it reaches market. Just imagine the potential good of a technology that delays ripening, like the one used to create the Flavr-Savr tomato. The most important role of GM foods may lie in the salvation they offer developing regions, where surging birthrates and the pressure to produce on the limited available arable land lead to an overuse of pesticides and herbicides with devastating effects upon both the environment and the farmers applying them; where nutritional deficiencies are a way of life and, too often, of death; and where the destruction of one crop by a pest can be a literal death sentence for farmers and their families...The opposition to GM foods is largley a sociopolitical movement whose arguments, though couched in the language of science, are typically unscientific."
Unscientific indeed, like in "Frankenfood". I think i’m gonna buy his new book! You should too!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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27/11/2003
Hunger on the rise again? Don’t blame globalization, the FAO says.
In Belgium, as elsewhere, there is much to do about the latest hunger report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). According to the media, the FAO-report says that hunger is on the rise again and that we are losing the fight. Of course some will blame neoliberal globalization. But the truth is a little more complicated, as Johan Norberg points out:
"(...) hunger is being reduced in developing countries. (...) In 1970, 37 per cent were undernourished, in 1991 20 per cent and in 1996 18 per cent. However, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) annual hunger report, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003, this strong trend was reversed in the last half of the 1990s, a fact that is now being circulated in the media. The revised figures show that the number of hungry in developing countries was reduced by only 20 million people in the last ten years. However, since population has grown by almost 700 million, this means that the proportion of undernourished in developing countries is the lowest ever, about 17 per cent.
No doubt the fact that the progress is slower than FAO thought a few years ago will be used by anti-globalists to show that the world is becoming a worse place. As we see from the figures that is a false conclusion, and on present trends the number of hungry will be cut by more than a third in the next ten years, according to the FAO. Furthermore the progress is in Latin America and Asia, in globalising countries with high growth, such as Brazil, China, Vietnam and Thailand. Some examples are really spectacular. In Peru the proportion of hungry has been reduced from 40 to 11 per cent in the last ten years, in Ghana from 35 to 12. At the same time hunger is increasing in Africa and the Middle and Near East, especially in countries which are de-globalising and/or affected by conflict, such as Zimbabwe, Congo, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and North Korea. That’s hardly an argument for anti-globalisation.
FAO agrees with this description, and points out that more growth and an end to Western protectionism is essential for further progress. Hunger is not the result of lack of food, but of a lack of freedom. The world has more food production than ever, the problem is that we also have dictatorships, corruption and protectionism that make sure that everybody do not get access to this food."
Indeed, as the FAO says:
"International trade can have a major impact on reducing hunger and poverty in developing countries. Overall, countries that are more involved in trade tend to enjoy higher rates of economic growth."
And economic growth is very important:
"According to the report, preliminary analysis suggests that countries with significantly higher economic and agricultural growth had the most success in reducing hunger."
In your face, Jose Bové!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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27/11/2003
Quote of the day
"The primary support for smoking bans seems to come from folks who don’t like having to dry clean their clothes after a night out, and who are therefore asserting their God-given right to visit any bar or restaurant they like on their own terms, owners and other customers be damned."
(Julian Sanchez)
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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27/11/2003
Intellectual property rights, or the right to live?
Michael J. Totten blogs from Guatemala City:
"The economy here isn’t remotely up to Western standards, but every shop is full of modest wares, and street vendors hawk everything from knockoff goods (“Hugo Boos” t-shirts), pirated gay pornography on DVD, and allegedly brand-name perfumes in tiny bottles with hand-made labels. There are almost no beggars at all, and even less garbage and graffitti. The city is poor but the center is nearly immaculate, much cleaner than New York or Paris. Nearly everyone, even the very poor, are sharply dressed and unfailingly polite. The people here have a sullen and heavy look about them, but they carry themselves with a quiet upright dignity. They are poor, but they do the very best they can with what little they do have. Everyone here is a survivor."
While everyone is trying to survive it seems that the U.S. It trying to make that survival more difficult. Also writing from Guatemala, but then from Coatepeque, Nicholas Kristof says that the American government is putting patents, and the interests of pharmaceutical companies, over public health concerns:
"In this impoverished corner of south-western Guatemala, lush with jungle and burbling brooks, you can just about see people dying as an indirect result of America’s trade agenda.
Even now, some governments in Central America choose to let their people die rather than distribute cheap generic AIDS drugs, which would save more lives but might irritate the U.S. And now America is trying to make it more difficult for these countries to use generic drugs."
In my view intellectual property rights (IPR’s), such as patents, shouldn’t be on a trade agenda in the first place. As Jagdish Bhagwati says, IPR’s has nothing to do with (free) trade, but everything with collecting royalties. It’s about maximizing profits, while trade is about comparative advantage, competition and economic growth. IPR’s, when vigorously imposed, are impediments to trade, not facilitators. Patents are monopolies, trade creates competition.
So Kristof is right. If U.S. trade officials really are sensitive to third-world health needs they’d drop strong intellectual property provisions from their trade agenda.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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26/11/2003
Rethinking Camelot
Christopher Hitchens provides a usefull antidote to the recurring JFK-hype:
"There was a time when the high casualty rate among Kennedys made foolish
people talk about a family "curse". On the contrary, the Kennedys were extremely
lucky.
In a few decades, they went from being second-class immigrants in Boston to the
holding of super-rich family compounds in Palm Beach and New England and
Virginia. The family fortune was made illegally during the bootlegging epoch -
which I must say I regard as having some redeeming social value - but the
ruthlessness and the sense of entitlement is what most strikes the eye.
That and the political opportunism - old Joe, the family patriarch, was pro-Hitler
when he thought Germany was on the winning side (and had to be recalled for this
reason as American ambassador to London).
Jack and Bobby were both supporters of the foul Senator McCarthy when that
looked like a path to advancement. They later tried to take credit for the Civil
Rights "March on Washington": a march which was mainly necessary because they
had shown no courage in standing up for civil rights. It’s a rather mediocre and
depressing story and I am not sorry to see it beginning at last to vanish in our
rear-view mirror."
Read the rest!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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26/11/2003
A worldly food: Flemish Bolivian French freedom fries
From the
Progressive Policy Institute:
"A modest Thanksgiving proposal for ending the ’freedom fries’ vs. ’French
fries’ debate -- rename them "Bolivian fries."
Thanksgiving figuratively stands for good-will among people of different
faiths and backgrounds, and actually commemorates the three-day-long
holiday feast held in 1621 by the Pilgrims of Plymouth colony and about 90
members of the Wampanoag nation of eastern Massachusetts, after the
tribe’s decision to teach the starving and freezing Pilgrims to grow local
produce and catch local fish. The historical record written by Plymouth
Colony Governor William Bradford some years later mentions "water foule
[and]great store of wild Turkies, besids venison, &c. .. About a peck a
meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corn to yt
proportion;" turkey, together with cranberries, pumpkin, and other
traditional Thanksgiving products presumably eaten at that event, are still
mainly local products.
Other farm products originally bred in the Americas, however, have traveled
very widely. The paprika in Hungarian goulash, the tomatoes in Italian
pasta sauce and the chilies in Thai som tam, Sichuan bean curd, and
Indian vindaloo are all originally from Mexico and Guatemala. The peanuts
in West African groundnut stew and the chocolate in Swiss chocolate are
also meso-American products; potatoes are South American, first bred by
Aymara and Quechua farmers in the Andes before being carried over to
Europe by Spanish entrepreneurs (or possibly Sir Walter Raleigh) in the
1500s. It isn’t clear how the fried version became known in the U.S. As
’French fries;’ one theory is that General Pershing’s soldiers brought the
nickname back from Flanders after World War I. Anyway, Happy
Thanksgiving."
Bolivian fries? Well, maybe. But i think they should be called Flemish fries. I don’t know
why those soldiers called it French fries while they enjoyed this delicious product in
Flanders, but they were wrong. The product "french fries" is actually a Flemish (Belgian) invention, so why not
call it that way? Yes the potato is from America, but the groundnut stew of
Swiss chocholate is from West Africa, but they still call it Swiss chocolate.
Anyway one has to pay tribute to those farmers in the Andes and those Spanish entrepreneurs.
It’s thanks to them that we Flemish were able to make such a tastfull food! Happy Thanksgiving!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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26/11/2003
The toppling of Saddam’s statue
The image of the fall of Saddam’s regime that struck the most was of course the toppling of Saddam’s
statue in Baghdad by some 200 Iraqi’s, aided by American troops. Some of the left are
now trying to ridiculise this image. Think of the toppling of the "statue" of Bush when the
president visited London last week. Or of the scathing remarks about the small number
of Iraqi’s present.
But they are wrong. As Johann Hari points out:
"As I found
on a visit last year, there were statues and images of
Saddam on every Baghdad corner. There was no
obvious rallying point, no Bastille for tens of thousands
to storm.
All over the city, there were small bonfires of Saddam’s
image that day. There were many crowds of 200 or
more; not one solitary group egged on by the US (...)"
The same, of course, happened not only in Baghdad, but all over the country. Saddam was
a dictator, and a mass murderer (no, we didn’t find weapons of mass destruction, but we
do find mass graves all the time; if there ever was a weapon of mass destruction it was Saddam
himself!). And while toppling a self-made statue of Bush can seem
very gratifying to some on the left, it is an insult to all the Iraqi’s that made those small
bonfires and to the majority who are glad he’s gone (not to speak of the hundres of thousands that
perished under his regime).
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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25/11/2003
A solution for spam
Troubles with e-mail overload? Troubles with spam? This report, written by Mark Hurst,
gives some solutions. How do you manage incoming e-mail? It’s simple!
"Keep the inbox empty."
Well, simple maybe, but not easy:
"Achieving simplicity — or emptiness,
in this case — takes time, practice, and continual improvement. It’s difficult but better
than the alternative: drowning in e-mails, causing the user to become less and less
effective. Only an empty inbox will allow users to take full advantage of the benefits
of e-mail."
A second best solution is the use of mail-filters. But it’s really second-best, especially
if you use the filters of Microsoft Outlook:
"Like many other popular software
programs, Outlook is crammed with features and details that users don’t really
need. Users should demand better tools from their IT departments and the software
industry. (...) Obviously, it shouldn’t require nine steps to create a simple spam-deleting mail filter.
No wonder many users don’t use that feature in Outlook."
In any case, if you want to learn to manage your e-mail, read the whole report. It’s worth it.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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25/11/2003
Le nouveau VTM est arrivé
De Morgen heeft een interview met de nieuwe bazen van VTM, Bert Geenen en Jan Verheyen. (geen link)
Het is duidelijk dat de twee vast van plan zijn de commerciële zender nieuwe leven
in te blazen. Ze hebben daarvoor overigens de ondersteuning van de raad van beheer die
blijkbaar bereid is (tijdelijk) genoegen te nemen met minster winst en meer wil investeren in de programma’s.
De eerste geluiden die we horen zijn alvast veelbelovend: minder herhalingen, meer
verrassingen en minder voorspelbaarheid, ruimte voor satire (Raf Coppens, Kopspijkers...).
Vooral dit laatste was volgens mij het zwakke punt van VTM: aan de Medialaan leken ze nu
eenmaal niet in staat verfrissende humor à la Marc Uytterhoeven en Bart De Pauw te brengen.
Hopelijk komt daar nu verandering in.
Met één uitspraak van Jan Verheyen heb ik wél problemen. Hij stelt namelijk dat VTM zich
links van het centrum moet positioneren. Hoe? Is VTM een politieke partij dan? En waarom
moet in Vlaanderen nu persé alles "links van het centrum" zijn? Is verrassend zijn per definitie links?
Ik dacht van niet.
Hoe dan ook toch veel succes toegewenst aan het nieuwe dynamische duo Bert en Jan. Zoals
Mike Verdrengh zou zeggen: "toi, toi, toi"!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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25/11/2003
Wie is Jacinta De Roeck nu eigenlijk?
Volgens haarzelf een sociaal groene die deel uitmaakt van de SP-A/Spirit-fractie maar toch
als onafhankelijke wil zitten en niet alle voorstellen van de SP-A zal steunen.
Dat kan tellen!
Eerst bij Agalev (nu Groen!) waar ze nauwelijk stemmen haalde en als lijsttrekker niet verkozen geraakte.
Vervolgens gecoöpteerd door Stevaert en de SP-A. En nu zegt ze dat ze uit Groen! stapt,
maar ze toch als onafhankelijke wil blijven zitten, dus in feite ook los van de partij die
haar coöpteerde en haar de Senaatszetel (die ze, gebaseerd op haar stemmenaantal, niet verdiende!) schonk. Ge moet
maar durven!
Ik kan me nauwelijks voorstellen dat er geen SP-A’ers zijn die het hier niet ontzettend
moeilijk mee hebben.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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24/11/2003
Found! A good Bush-policy!
This seems good policy to me:
"(...) another Bush action that has received little fanfare holds great promise for making a dent in African poverty. On June 19, Bush signed a law authorizing $375 million in fiscal 2003 and 2004 for institutions that dispense tiny loans of $50 and up to poor people who want to start businesses. Many of these "microloans" are targeted for Africa. The sum is a $65 million increase over existing levels for those two years, and the bill directs the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to ensure that most of the money reaches the world’s poorest. That may sound like chump change, considering that 166 million people in Africa are desperately poor. But from Bolivia to Indonesia to Uganda, microlending programs are proving that small sums can dramatically lift living standards. In the past five years, the number of such banks has tripled to 2,200 and now reach 52 million people around the world, by one estimate."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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24/11/2003
Dell goes back to America, but not really...
Dell is sending jobs back to the U.S.:
"In a surprising about-face, Dell Inc. is moving some technical-support jobs back from India to the United States."
The reason? Indian workers, while much cheaper, are apparently not that good. Dell still has to listen to it’s customers, and they are complaining. But it’s no sign of a general revearsal:
"A recent Stanford University study estimates that Indian call centers have picked up 200,000 jobs since March 2002. Gartner Inc., the tech research firm, estimates that U.S. information technology companies will move one in 10 jobs offshore by the end of the year."
Even Dell does not rule out going back:
"Dell executives left open the possibility that tech support for corporate customers could be shifted overseas again, if technical expertise and language skills improve there."
In essence we see a very dynamic world, where companies are shifting jobs all the time in search for competitive advantage. And competitive advantage has to be understood not only in terms of labor-costs, but also of expertise of it’s employees, and of being present where the action is:
"One reason Dell’s employment has grown outside the United States is that the company is selling more PCs and other products globally, particularly in countries such as China and Germany."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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21/11/2003
The prolonged death-struggle of the U.S. textile industry
Now that the U.S. Textile industry is getting renewed protection ("safeguards", in Orwellian newspeak) from the Bush administration it’s time to take an historical view. Indeed, it seems that the destruction of the American textile industry by foreign trade is going on for decades, or so they say:
- 1948: "Six more months...would bring an almost complete collapse of the textile industry (in the U.S.)."
- 1955: "The textile industry...faces losing odds in its struggle to keep mills running."
- 1961: "The collapse which the industry had been predicting to our Government for several years
arrived with a bang."
- 1961: "Unless immediate relief is provided, the domestic textile industry will be destroyed by
foreign textile imports."
- 1970: "We are going out of business, and fast. The Mills bill (a textile quota bill) is the only thing that is going to save us..."
- 1985: "If we do not act now to curb imports, in five years our entire industry...will simply cease to exist."
- 1985: "Well, this is the last gasp of the industry."
- 1990: "If the current trend continues...at the turn of the century the U.S. Textile industry will go the way of the dinosaurs-and extinct species."
The morons and cowards that said all this, are politicians of both parties and captains of industry. As captains of industry they are supposed to take risks and relish some foreign competition. Instead they are cry-babies turning to the government to safeguard them from imports.
The genius of American capitalism is not found in the textile industry!
Gepost door/Posted by: ivan
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20/11/2003
Afghan opinion
Afghans want security and disarmement, according to a
survey
by internetional relief and human rights groups. Nevertheless,
"despite the emphasis on security, 83 percent of respondents said they felt more secure
now than three years ago under Taliban rule, although fewer respondents in the southern
provinces of Gardez and Kandahar felt more secure. Similarly, respondents in those two
provinces--the location of increased fighting between returning Taliban forces and U.S.
and Afghan forces over the past six months--were considerably less optimistic about the
security situation."
Further,
"About two-thirds of respondents said they believed that a reconstituted Afghan army or
police would be able to provide security in local areas within the next five years.
Nonetheless, a significant 42 percent overall said either international forces--either alone
or combined with Afghan forces--represented the best guarantee for greater security."
This is significant, not only does the Afgan people feel more secure now then under the Taliban,
wich flies in the face of the view of some lefties (people like Noam Chomsky) that the Taliban, for all
there faults, at least provided security and stability. But on top of that, people are feeling
more insecure in places were the Taliban is trying to return. And a big part of the
respondends wants American and other foreign forces to stay.
At least the Afghan people know who their greatest threat is.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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20/11/2003
George Bush is sounding like a leftie...
"Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for
the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this
bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and
ideologies of violence took hold.
As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the
oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is
temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should
oppose tyranny wherever it is found."
A great agenda, something to support.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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19/11/2003
More bad news from the trade front
The Bush administration is preparing to restrict imports on Chinese textile imports,
the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Obviously the textile industry cheered the decision (they will be the happy few),
but for the rest it’s all very bad news:
"New trade restraints - on top of 40 years of quotas and high tariffs -- will do nothing to save textile industry jobs. They will, however, raise prices for consumers and
harm trade relations with China. Considering that China is our fastest growing export market
and a country we want to see overcome its own protectionist lobbies and comply with its
own WTO commitments, CITA’s ruling will prove adverse to U.S. Interests throughout the
economy."
Indeed, look at Wal-Mart, the star-performer of the American economy. According to the Salt Lake Tribune Wal-Mart imported more than
$12 billion in goods from China in 2002. Import restrictions will make this goods more
expensive, wich will be bad for consumers, for Wal-Mart or for both. And don’t
forget that Wal-Mart has been responsible for most of productivity growth in the
retailsector and as such has been a driver for productivity growth in the whole of the
U.S.-economy (some suggest that Wal-Mart has been responsible for
most of the difference in productivity growth between Europe and the U.S.).
Why is the Bush-adminstration prepared to bring all this in jeopardy? Why is
Bush willing to listen to the - almost defunct - textile industry, but not to
performers like Wal-Mart?
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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19/11/2003
the hero that dooms us to extinction
Found this on the website of the Socialist Party of Kurdistan:
"The town gave Powell a hero’s welcome, lining the route to watch his convoy go past.
Many inhabitants had donned traditional Kurdish dress of puffed trousers and a wide belt, to stand alongside Kurdish fighters decked out in local dress
or fatigues. Children thronged the streets making military salutes while the crowd held aloft portraits of US President George W. Bush
and banners emblazoned with the words: "Our liberators are welcome," "We love America" or "Thank you President Bush"."
This happened on september 15. Powell was visiting Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan, were 5.000 people perished after a gas attack by Saddam’s army in 1988.
Meanwhile in London, mayor Ken Livingston call’s Bush "the greatest threat to life on this planet that we’ve most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction."
My guess is that the Iraqi Kurds, some of them more socialist then Livingston, would strongly disagree. And, as it happens, so will the Brits. The Guardian reports:
"Today’s ICM poll shows that 43% of voters say they welcome Mr Bush’s visit,
while 36% say they would prefer it if he did not come.
It also shows that that 62% of the electorate think that America is "generally
speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world". Some 15% believe that the
US is the "evil empire" in the world, according to the survey.
Opposition to the war in Iraq is also shown to have dropped by 12 points since
September to 41% of the electorate. Those who believe it was justified has
jumped from 38% to 47%."
Gepost door/Posted by: ivan
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17/11/2003
Commentaarsectie werd toegevoegd
Een commentaarsectie werd toegevoegd. Dit wil zeggen, dat je op elk bericht voortaan kunt reageren en jouw opmerkingen kunt geven! Hoe? Gewoon, door op "Reacties/Comments" te klikken en gebruik te maken van het invulformulier.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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16/11/2003
EnviroSpin Watch
Professor Emeritus Philip Stott on "sustainable development":
"a ubiquitous, politically-compliant, phrase, a pleasant sounding palliative to inexorable and inevitable change. Dished up as a placebo to ecochondriacs the world over. It hides the fact that ecological and economic change are the norm, not the exception; that equilibrium solutions are impossible goals; and that we inhabit a rather disturbing non-equilibrium world in which volcanoes erupt, earthquakes quake, seas rise and fall, and climate changes, whether under human influence or not. The phrase lurks everywhere, in government documents, shareholder reports, and research grant applications. Without it, you can get no money. For business, it is a neat PC word, all PR and ethical investment, but signifying little; for scientists, it means, "Give me funds for research"; for politicians, "Your nice ’Green’ vote"; for authoritarian environmentalists, it means either no growth at all or limited growth of a type approved of by an elite few – wind farms, ’yes’, nuclear power, ’no’; organics, ’yes’, GM ’no’."
Read the rest of his media greenspeak dictionary.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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16/11/2003
Quote of the day
"Almost every morsel of our food is genetically modified (...). A wheat grain is genetically modified grass seed, just as a pekinese is a genetically modified wolf. Playin God? We’ve been playing God for centuries!"
Richard Dawkins, An Open Letter to Prince Charles
(Note: As Dawkins points out, luckily wheat is genetically modified, otherwise we could not eat it.)
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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16/11/2003
Left globalization observer
Doug Henwood, editor of the Left Business Observer, dispells some myths about globalization.
"Globalization is thought to be the source of many economic ills. Is it? We First Worlders have to be very careful when complaining about its pressure on living standards, since the initial European rise to wealth depended largely on the colonies, and we still derive benefit from cheap labor and cheap resources. It’s embarrassing to hear echoes of Pat Buchanan in the complaints by Ralph Nader and his associates that NAFTA and the World Trade Organization threaten US sovereignty. Washington has abused the sovereignty of scores of nations over the decades."
"(...) why, if globalization was so decisively immiserating, did the real hourly wage rise after 1995, reversing a two-decade slide, even as NAFTA took effect and trade penetration increased?"
"The relation is far from perfect, but if anything, more globalized countries are less unequal than less globalized ones. Western European social democracies are more globalized than the United States but less unequal--as is Canada, to a lesser degree. South Korea is much more globalized than Brazil but less unequal; so is Mexico. The point is not that promoting globalization would promote equality, but that the foregrounding of globalization as the cause of inequality isn’t a simple case to make. Income distribution depends more on domestic institutions like unions and welfare states than on internationalization."
"Among some antiglobo activists, there’s a strange nostalgia for the nation-state, as if it’s one of the innocent structures that globalization is undermining. At least two aspects of the nostalgia for the nation are worth picking apart. First, in the narrow economic sense, fond memories of the pre-1980 protectionist regimes are often evoked. Like many nostalgias, the historical record doesn’t justify the sentiment. Even the most protected developmental state is shaped by external forces; the height of the tariff walls and the vigor of the state intervention themselves are testimony to that. But they seem to flourish in particular historical enclaves, like the Latin American import-substitution model from the 1930s through the debt crisis of the early 1980s, and run into trouble when their moment passes. By the late 1960s, for example, growth slowed in Latin America as import-substitution reached its limits. Domestic firms were inefficient, and average incomes were too low to sustain a home consumer market. Labor agitation was met with repression."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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15/11/2003
De gratis-manie
Rudy Aernoudt, directeur van het kabinet van de federale minister van economie Fientje Moerman, maakt brandhout van de "gratis-manie":
"De gratis-manie vertoont inderdaad heel wat communistische trekjes. Het prijsmechanisme wordt als allocatiemechanisme uitgeschakeld. De staat wordt opnieuw de deus ex machina die plant, beheert en financiert, al dan niet via autonome overheidsbedrijven.De behoeften blijven onbeperkt. Na de gratis trein stapt men over op de gratis bus, neemt een douche met gratis water, inclusief bijhorende gratis sproeikop, en telefoneert nadien gratis, het liefst mobiel, om een gratis plaatsje te reserveren in cinema of theater. Tenzij men eerder zin heeft in een avondje gratis televisie. Culturele behoeften zijn nu eenmaal basisbehoeften, leerde Maslow ons.Als al dat gratis niet meer betaalbaar wordt omdat de, al dan niet verbruikende, belastingsbetaler er schoon genoeg van krijgt, wat dan?"
En hij heeft nog een boodschap voor de rode uitvinders van de "gratis-manie":
"(...) na de teleurgang van de communistische regimes in Oost- en Centraal-Europa, is het marktsysteem tot het betere allocatieprincipe uitgeroepen. Zelfs de Socialistische Internationale in Parijs in 1999 heeft de primauteit van het marktmechanisme erkend. De prijs is het kloppend, soms zelfs vibrerend, hart van dit marktmechanisme. De prijs buitenspel zetten en tegelijk de lofrede van de marktwerking bezingen is dus een contradictio in terminis."
Lees de rest.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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14/11/2003
The flemish beerdrinker
Thanks to Edward Hugh, i now have a new nickname. So from now on this weblog is named: "Ivanhoe’s weblog. The flemish beerdrinker".
Enjoy! I know i will (the beer i mean).
(For the women, there is no need to panic, i'm really quite athletic, and a single white male. It's just a nickname i like.)
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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14/11/2003
Rumors
Rumor has it that days after the attacks of September 11, the American government let family members of Bin Laden fly within the country, while there was a general ban on air travel, and that the same members were allowed to leave the country without questioning by and over the objections of the FBI.
How much of this is true? Snopes.com has done some homework and concludes:
"Clearly bin Laden family members were allowed to leave the U.S. shortly after the September 11 attacks, and this was effected with the approval and assistance of the American government. Yet the Saudis didn’t fly out during the ban, nor was the FBI denied access to them while they were here or prevented from knowing who was going to be on those flights. In preparation for the exodus, a number of Saudis were ferried to central locations where those outbound jets would eventually leave from, which means they were allowed to violate the ban on air travel within the U.S. Was it right that fear for their safety and/or favors owed abroad should have prompted their being treated as special circumstance exceptions to the ban?"
A nagging question.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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14/11/2003
Quote of the day
"Of course we must be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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13/11/2003
The amazing benefits of globalization
Marcelo, one of the guest bloggers on Bonoboland has posted this remarkable fact:
"A new survey by global human resources firm Hewitt Associates says Indian workers gained an average salary increase of 14% in 2003. This was twice as much as second placed Philippines, where pay was up about 7%."
He correctly points out that this is the result of the outsourcing of services to countries like India. More remarkable still: not only the recieving country benefits. According to a study of the McKinsey Global Institute, the sending country benefits the most!
"Of the $1.45 - $1.47 of value MGI estimates is created globally from every dollar spend a domestic company chooses to divert abroad, the U.S. captures $1.12 - $1.14 while the receiving country captures on average 33 cents. In other words, the U.S. captures 78 percent of the total value."
Globalization really is a win-win-solution.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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13/11/2003
Het ggo-kind en het badwater
Guy Van Den Broek, journalist bij De Tijd, breekt een lans voor een rationale benadering
van biotechnologie en ggo’s:
"Indien de voedselvoorziening in de toekomst een probleem blijft, wordt het ethisch toch
erg moeilijk om die technologie zomaar af te wijzen. Europa met zijn voedseloverschotten
kan zich deze luxe wel veroorloven, maar voor de ontwikkelingslanden blijft die
technologie aantrekkelijk. De weerstand in Europa voor al wat genetische manipulatie is,
zowel wat de planten als het gezondheidsonderzoek betreft, maakt het die
biotechbedrijven moeilijk hier te blijven. Duitsland, dat goed tien jaar geleden nog aan de
top stond inzake farma- en plantenonderzoek, staat nergens meer. Gent stond begin de
jaren 80 aan de wieg van de biotechnologie wereldwijd. De ethiek naar mens en natuur
toe stond daar toen hoog in het vaandel. Dat er in de EU strikte regels nodig zijn voor het
omgaan met GGO’s betwist niemand. In de gehanteerde criteria moeten wel de kennis en
de wetenschap primeren en niet een vage angst voor het onbekende."
Ondermeer in Vlaanderen zijn we goed bezig de biotechnologie de nek om te draaien.
Huidig minister van milieu Sannen wil Vlaanderen immers ggo-vrij maken. Maar dit is een irrationele
en onwetenschappelijke benadering van een heel belangrijk vraagstuk. In elk geval te belangrijk om het aan de groenen over te laten.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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12/11/2003
Anderlecht op de goede weg? Of uit de bocht?
Volgens Franky Vercauteren gaat Anderlecht voortaan profielen opstellen voor de spelers van de eerste ploeg. Dit moet verhinderen dat er nog verdedigers van 1m60 en 60 kilo in het eerste elftal terecht komen. Wegens niet geschikt voor het moderne voetbal. Het is in elk geval een heel moderne bedrijfsmatige aanpak. Misschien ook nog een "assesment" doen met rollenspelen? Enfin, op zich lijkt me dit geen slechte beslissing. Het toont aan dat het bestuur van Anderlecht een stap verder wil zetten in de professionalisering. Maar te nauwgezet moet men hier ook niet aan vasthouden: ook al past een speler niet in het profiel, toch kan het om een dijk van een verdediger gaan. Hoe dan ook kan men hierin de hand zien van Herman Van Holsbeek, die blijkbaar ook wat wil doen aan de communicatie (of het gebrek daaraan) binnen de club. Anderlecht kan er alleen maar beter van worden. Om aan teambuilding te doen volgen spelers en trainers donderdag overigens een anti-slipcursus. Echt teambuilding is het nu ook weer niet: het moest immers van de sponsor(neen, niet Ford). Hopelijk trekt men er wel lessen uit voor de volgende wedstrijden.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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12/11/2003
Kevin Brancato on competition
Kevin Brancato:
"Let me state my views bluntly: perfect competition is a myth! I would be shocked to find any markets that function like some ridiculously simplistic model. First, no market meets the almost impossible criteria of zero transactions cost, perfect & symmetrical information, homogenous product, non-decreasing marginal cost, zero fixed cost, and indefinite numbers of suppliers and demanders. Competition in the real world is a battle between real producers as they vary prices, quality, service, and the total experience."
And:
"Since perfect competition is a myth, the criticisms of welfare economics, which holds the results of perfect competition as an ideal, should be taken not with a grain of salt, but with a sea of salt. How do you determine whether a segment of the economy is a chronic "market failure" when you’re not sure what an efficient market looks like, or whether any of the alternatives to markets proposed by analysts, pundits, and politicians provide more "socially efficient" results?"
(Via Lynne Kiesling)
My view exactly.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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12/11/2003
Eliminating agricultural subsidies
Is eliminating agricultural subsidies good for the poor?
Arvind Panagariya
seems to think not:
"The presumption that
such liberalization will broadly benefit the poor countries, implicit in the allegations that
agricultural subsidies in the rich countries hurt the poor in developing countries, is unlikely
to be supported by closer scrutiny in its unqualified form. In so far as such liberalization
will raise food prices and the poor spend a disproportionately large amount of their income
on food items, the opposite is entirely possible. The lion’s share of benefits of such
liberalization is likely to accrue to potential exporters of these products, which happen to be
relatively richer developing countries concentrated in Asia and Latin America."
I guess the poor of Brazil, a relatively richer country concentrated in Latin America, still would be
very happy with the elimination of the subsidies.
On the other hand:
"As such the
case for agricultural liberalization must be made more on the ground that the current system
is hugely inefficient, resulting in very substantial deadweight losses and transfers to the
relatively rich farmers in the OECD countries. Redirection of even a small fraction of these
subsidies towards the poor in the Third World will go a long way towards alleviating
poverty."
So elimination would make everybody happy, except those relatively rich farmers in the OECD of course.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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12/11/2003
Quote of the day
Henry Youngman:
"What good is happiness? It can’t buy money."
(Thanks to David Wessel)
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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11/11/2003
Protectionisme, not trade makes the poor poorer
U.S. Cotton subsidies, a form of protectionism, makes the poor poorer:
"For American cotton farmers (whose average net worth is about $800,000) the subsidies may be the difference between growing cotton and growing something else, or between farming and pursuing a different line of work, assuming they can’t compete without the government’s support. For African farmers who earn something like $800 a year, the subsidies can be the difference between eating and starving."
How?
"this welfare program for the well-to-do has a ruinous impact on poor farmers in other countries who do not enjoy such largess. By artificially boosting the cotton supply, subsidies depress world prices, driving farmers in countries such as Mali, Benin, and Burkina Faso out of business."
Read the whole article. And do something about it!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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11/11/2003
Huh?
French farmer and leftwing nutcase (here i go again!) José Bové wrote:
"We reject the global trade model dictated by the multinationals. Let’s go back to agriculture; less than 5% of agricultural production goes on to the world market. Yet those responsible for that 5% of international trade dominate the other 95% of the production that is destined for national consumption (or neighbouring countries) and force this sector to submit to their logic. It’s a totalitarian exercise. Agriculture should not be reduced to mere trade. People have the right to be able to feed themselves and take precautionary measures on food as they see fit."
(Via Frans Groenendijk)
Huh? Agriculture dominated by the logic of international trade? I thought that agriculture was dominated by subsidies, tariffs, outright importprohibitions and so on. It seems that European agriculture policy for instance (but also US and Japan agriculture policy) is dominated by the exact opposite of international trade, it’s dominated by the logic of protectionism. And the theme of precautionary measures is just another symbol of the logic of protectionisme: it’s comes in handy to keep our borders closed to foreign agricultural products.
Of course, as Frans says, food is not like any other product. But, these days it seems any product is not like any other product. Bové uses the same logic as Bush. Bush says: steel is not like any other product so we need "safeguards". And Bové: food is not like any other product so we need "precautionary measures".
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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10/11/2003
Do the right thing!
The Wall Street Journal reports:
"The 15-nation EU has drafted a list of U.S. Imports ranging from cigarettes to frozen vegetables to paper products, on which it is threatening to impose 100% import duties, effectively pricing the goods out of the EU market."
(Via Brad De Long)
Come on now George, listen to the industries targeted by the European sanctions and to the steel users in your country, and scrap those silly steel tariffs! I don’t want to lose those delicious American vegetables.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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10/11/2003
Happyness and sadness at the WTO
The Appelate Body (AP) of the World Trade Organisation struck down the protectionist steel tariffs of the United States for the second time. In march the dispute panel of the WTO ruled that the so-called "safeguards" were illegal. The US appealed, but the AP mostly upheld the conclusions of the panel.
As a free trade radical, i’m of course happy with the decision. The steel tariffs, imposed by president Bush largely for political reasons, are protectionist and in conflict with the free trade rethoric of the administration. The "safeguards" are also bad economic policy:
"Steel users have shed jobs at a slightly faster rate in the past year than steel producers. Steel industry wages remain in excess of the average for durable manufacturing industries and rose 6 per-cent between March 2002 and July 2003. Despite the safeguards, the steel industry is still unable to turn a profit."
On the other hand, the WTO can’t rule that the US should withdraw the measures. The decision only allows the complainers, like the EU, to take countermeasures. So if Bush refuses to back down and the EU takes the countermeasures, the result is more, not less protectionisme, and less, not more free trade. If this indeed turns out to be the result, it shows that the dispute settlement mechanisme is deeply flawed.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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10/11/2003
De uitbreiding van Europa en delokalisering
Met de uitbreiding van de Europese Unie met tien nieuwe lidstaten voor de deur, is de discussie van "delokalisatie" opnieuw volop opgelaaid. De vrees is dat bedrijven, op zoek naar lagere (loon)kosten, hun activiteiten zullen verplaatsen naar de nieuwe EU-staten uit Centraal- en Oost-Europa. Met nog meer werkloosheid in eigen land tot gevolg, en een verdere afbrokkeling van de industriële tewerkstelling. Jozef Konings, van de universiteit van Leuven, en meer bepaald van het LICOS Centre for Transition Economics, heeft de zaak onderzocht en komt tot een aantal (verrassende) conclusies:
1. Studies tot nu tot uitgevoerd tonen vrijwel in consensus aan dat bedrijven niet naar Oost-Europa verhuizen omwille van de lagere kosten, maar omdat ze een graantje willen meepikken van de economische groei in die landen. Deze vorm van "delokalistatie" gaat echter niet te koste van de werkgelegenheid in het thuisland. Het bedrijf in kwestie realiseert immers meer omzet en winst, en kan daardoor ook meer jobs in eigen land creëren (en doet dat ook).
2. Konings zelf vergeleek loonkost- en productiviteitsverschillen tussen België enerzijds en drie Oost-Europese landen anderzijds met name Polen, Hongarije en Tsjechië. Landen die bekend staan als groeimarkten. Konings stelde vast dat er géén Belgische loonkostenhandicap met die landen bestaat: hoewel de gemiddelde loonkost er zeven keer lager ligt, ligt ook de productiviteit zeven maal onder het Belgische niveau. Het verschil in kosten kan dus moeilijk een drijfveer zijn om in die landen te gaan investeren. Rekening houdend én met loonkosten én met verschillen in productiviteit, blijkt dat vanuit competitief oogpunt het zelfs duurder is te produceren in Polen dan in België!
3. De loonkostenproblematiek speelt eerder binnen de huidige EU (Portugal bvb. Produceert wél goedkoper), dan met nieuwe lidstaten zoals Polen.
4. Sectoraal bekeken, krijgen we eenzelfde beeld, hoewel men niet kan veralgemenen. Maar sectoren zoals kleding en textiel, die in België een hoge loonkost hebben in relatie tot hun productiviteit en die dus met andere woorden het moeilijk hebben om prijscompetitief te zijn, kampen met hetzelfde probleem in de Oost-Europese landen. De verschillen zijn te klein om eruit te kunnen besluiten dat men uit kostoverwegingen naar Tsjechië, Polen en Hongarije zou verhuizen, zeker gezien het feit dat België op andere vlakken (infrastructuur bvb.) grote voordelen heeft.
Kortom, er is geen reden tot paniekzaaierij. Integendeel, ik denk dat we onze ondernemingen eerder moeten aanmoedigen om in groeilanden als Polen en Tsjechië te investeren. Dat is goed voor die landen, maar ook voor onze bedrijven en voor ons land. Think local, act global!
Eén kleine nuancering is wel op zijn plaats. Als je alleen Oosteuropese landen neemt die als groeimarkten bekend staan, is het ook weer niet zo verwonderlijk dat men precies omwille van de groei in de landen investeert, dan omwille van de lage loonkost. Ik vraag me echter af dat wanneer je zou vergelijken met landen als Roemenië of Slovakije, je niet tot andere conclusies zou komen.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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9/11/2003
Straf he!
De indruk dat er een ongeloofelijke kloof bestaat tussen het "Vlaamse volk" en de "Vlaamse intelligentia" wordt meer en meer bevestigd. Neem het stemrecht voor migranten: zowat iedereen die zich intellectueel noemt in Vlaanderen is voor; de meeste Vlamingen zijn tegen. Ander voorbeeld. Vandaag in De Zevende Dag werd aan het aanwezige publiek de vraag gesteld of de kerk opengesteld moest worden voor de asielzoekers in Zeebrugge. De grote meerderheid, meer dan 60% zei nee. Reactie van Luc Alloo: "Straf he!" Tja.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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8/11/2003
Quote of the day
George W. Bush:
"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."
(Via Michael Totten.)
Right, right indeed!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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8/11/2003
How to salute the tiran ánd the people...
Journalist and playwright Johann Hari had a debate this morning on the BBC with, among else, George Galloway. Galloway is a left-wing nutcase and a fan of Saddam Hussein. I saw part of the debate where Hari lost his temper, with Galloway laughing at him. In Hari’s words:
"I just did a BBC TV show, ’The Sharp End’, opposite George ’Stalin is the victim of a bad press’ Galloway. Loathsome. He claimed that when he saluted Saddam Hussein with the words, "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability", he was in fact saluting the Iraqi people.
Brilliant: saluting the Iraqi people by bowing before a man who had just murdered a quarter of a million of them. That’s the stuff, George. (...) I fear I got too angry with him and sounded unbalanced - but when he just chuckled as I was describing Saddam’s crimes, I couldn’t stop myself from yelling."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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8/11/2003
Leve de globalisering!
Ik zal het maar bekennen: ik ben een fan van globalisering. Ik begrijp dat de idealisten van 11.11.11 ontgoocheld zullen zijn, maar het is niet anders.
Als "proglobalist" voel ik mij dan ook meer thuis op de weblog van Johan Norberg. Norberg is een gewezen anarchist, en de auteur van "In defence of global capitalism", in het Nederlands verschenen onder de titel "Leve de globalisering". Aanbevolen lectuur voor onze idealisten van 11.11.11.
Norberg werd onlangs door een Zweeds tijdschrift opgenomen in de lijst van de 100 machtigste Zweden onder de veertig jaar. Norberg’s amusante commentaar:
"(the) mixture of businessmen, politicians and journalists begs the question of the definition of power. To be able to force people to do what you want, for example take people’s money in taxes and tariffs (political power) is actually the opposite of making money by giving people what they want (economic power), and that is also something different from having a platform to try and convince people that this political power should be limited (my power to influence). But nevermind, I happen to like lists..."
Iets voor u Frans.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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8/11/2003
Frans Groenendijk
Langzaam vind ik mijn weg in de internationale bloggerswereld. Zoals reeds eerder gemeld, zit ik er mee dat mijn blog in het Nederlands is. De bloggerswereld is evenwel overwegend in het Engels, en dus was het idee om ook een Engelse versie op te starten. Tot Frans Groenendijk zijn oplossing aan mij suggereerde: doe het door mekaar! Schrijf in het Engels als het een thema is dat een internationaal publiek kan aanspreken, anders in het Nederlands. Een goed idee. Schrik dus niet als je binnenkort stukjes in het Engels ziet verschijnen.
Overigens ben ik met Frans en anderen in een interessante discussie verwikkeld over de vraag of de macht van grote ondernemingen moet worden beperkt en, zo ja, op welke wijze. Frans denkt dat absolute limieten moeten worden toegepast(bv. Een onderneming met een omzet die een bepaald maximum overschrijdt, moet worden worden gekortwiekt). Volgens mij moet worden gekeken naar "marktmacht". De beste manier om de macht van een onderneming te beperken is via de bevordering van concurrentie en de strijd tegen monopolies, niet door ondernemingen in hun groei te fnuiken. Enfin, meer op zijn website. Je moet wel een beetje zoeken aangezien de discussie over verschillende berichten is verspreid. Om het in het Engels te zeggen: Check it out!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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8/11/2003
Moeten wij De Post privatiseren?
Onlangs deed het Nederlandse postbedrijf TPG een aanbod om de Belgische post over te nemen. Minister van overheidsbedrijven wees het aanbod min of meer van de hand. Volgens hem wilden de Nederlanders de baas spelen en dat kon niet voor hem. Inderdaad, maar dat betekent niet dat de privatisering van De Post niet overwogen mag worden.
1. Dienstverlening
Een belangrijk argument tegen de privatisering van De Post is dat daardoor de (openbare en universele) dienstverlening in het gedrang zou komen, zeker in het licht van de nakende liberalisering waarbij bedrijven in de concurrentiestrijd alleen oog hebben voor winstgevende activiteiten. De verlieslatende activiteiten, vaak openbare dienstverlening, wordt afgestoten of verwaarloosd, of wordt weggeblazen door de concurrentie.
Is dit zo? Laten we kijken naar Nederland, waar de postmarkt relatief open is en de nationale operator een private onderneming is.
Om te beginnen haalt TPG de door de overheid vastgestelde doelstelling om 95% van de stukken binnen één dag te bezorgen. Nederland heeft een relatief hoog aantal postvestigingen en brievenbussen. En er wordt zes keer per week besteld, wat hoger is dan de Europese norm.
Wel is het zo dat het sorteren bij TPG volledig is geautomatiseerd en dat minder belang wordt gehecht aan de sociale rol van de postbode, wat de socialisten in ons land wel heel belangrijk vinden. Maar als men dit wil kan men de sociale rol van de postbode afdwingen via de wet en via een beheerscontract, net zoals de dichtheid van het kantorennetwerk kan worden bepaald door de overheid. Alleen moet deze laatste bereid zijn daarvoor het nodige geld op tafel te leggen. De openbare dienstverlening komt dus niet in het gedrang door het binnenhalen van een private partner (overigens zit de Nederlandse overheid zelf nog voor een stuk in de Nederlandse post).
2.Meerderheid of minderheid?
Vande Lanotte wil niet weten van de verkoop van een meerderheid van de aandelen. De overheid moet de baas blijven. Dit lijkt ons een academische discussie te zijn. Ook zonder meerderheid van de aandelen kan de overheid een belangrijke rol spelen via de instrumenten aangereikt door de vennootschapswetgeving, alsook via haar eigen wettelijke bevoegdheden. De overheid is immers geen gewone aandeelhouder: hij is tevens ook regelgever.
Het gaat erom wat het hele pakket oplevert. Stel dat het aanbod van de TPG in zijn geheel beter is dan dat van een ander postbedrijf; alleen eist TPG de meerderheid, ga je dat dan per definitie afwijzen? Dat lijkt niet de juiste manier van werken te zijn.
3. Nu of later?
Vande Lanotte wil nu nog niet praten. We moeten "eerst nog de noodzakelijke reorganisaties zelf doorvoeren". Daarbij wordt gedacht aan de problemen rond de "geo-route".
Ook hier zijn enkel nuanceringen nodig. Een strategische partner brengt immers de nodige expertise aan om de herstructurering te vergemakkelijken. TPG heeft daar overigens de nodige ervaring in. Bovendien brengt een nieuwe partner ook extra kapitaal aan, en ook dat maakt de herstructurering gemakkelijker. Ten slotte kan verwezen worden naar Belgacom: daar heeft men toch ook niet gewacht op de herstructurering om een partnerschap aan te gaan? Zulke zaken gaan dus hand in hand.
Dit alles wil niet zeggen dat we meteen moeten gaan onderhandelen met TPG en vervolgens plat op onze buik moeten gaan liggen. Ook andere pistes moeten zeker worden onderzocht. Maar op voorhand het aanbod afwijzen, lijkt ons dan ook weer niet de juiste strategie te zijn.
4. Belang van marktdiensten
Ten slotte moet verwezen worden naar een belangrijke studie van prof. Sleeuwagen over de Vlaamse economie. Sommige dienstensectoren, met name post en spoorwegen, zijn weinig efficiënt en productief, en hebben daarom een negatieve invloed op de rest van de economie. Het dus is in het belang van de hele economie dat men zich offensiever toont op vlak van liberalisering van de postsector en de privatisering van het overheidsbedrijf De Post.
Go for it, Johan!
Gepost door/Posted by: lvan
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6/11/2003
Monopoliepraktijken in Groot-Brittanië
Peter Clarke van het Adam Smith Institute vraagt zich af waarom de Britse post nog steeds een monopolie heeft, terwijl het Verenigd Koninkrijk toch voorloper is in de liberalisering en privatisering van nutssectoren(telecom, elektriciteit, spoorwegen...). Hetzelfde kan gezegd worden van de Belgische post: niet alleen inzake de liberalisering van de sector maar ook wat betreft de privatisering van het overheidsbedrijf De Post neemt men in ons land een weifelende houding aan. Of dat terecht is? Zal het één van de volgende dagen laten weten.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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6/11/2003
Rusland, Frankijk en de Iraakse tiran
De Nederlandse Volkskrant meldt:
"Saddam Hussein (liet) zich leiden door wat Franse en Russische diplomaten hem herhaaldelijk
zouden hebben verzekerd: zij zouden een door de VS geleide oorlog blokkeren door
vertragingstactieken en veto’s in de Veiligheidsraad van de VN."
(Via Republikeinse weblog)
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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6/11/2003
Hitchens over de Irak-oorlog
Christopher Hitchens, een schrijver van linkse signatuur, herbevestigt zijn steun voor het Amerikaanse beleid van "regime change" in Irak. Hitchens is niet bereid het gewezen regime van Saddam het voordeel van de twijfel te geven inzake massavernietigingswapens en steun voor terrorisme:
"The two chief justifications offered by the Bush administration (which did mention
human rights and genocide at its first presentation to the United Nations, an
appeal that fell on cold as well as deaf ears) were WMDs and terrorism.
Here, it is simply astonishing how many people remain willing to give Saddam
Hussein the benefit of the doubt. The late Dr. David Kelley, whose suicide
has so embarrassed the Blair government, put it very plainly in an article he
wrote just before the war. Seriousness about "inspections" required a regime
change in Iraq—no credible inspection could be conducted on any other
terms. This point has since been amply vindicated by the Kay inquiry, still in
its early stages, which has already unearthed compelling evidence of a
complex concealment program, of the designing of missiles well beyond the
permitted legal range, of the intimidation of scientists and witnesses, and of
the incubation (in some cases hidden in scientists’ homes) of deadly biological
toxins. Some of the other leads have turned out to be false, or at any rate not
proved, and no major stockpiles have yet been found. Nonetheless, the
Baathists declared a very impressive stockpile as late as 1999 and never
cared to inform the U.N. inspectorate what they had done with it. (If they
destroyed it themselves, it deserves to be pointed out, they were in gross and
open breach of the relevant resolutions, which anticipated this tactic and
specified that all weapons were to be turned over, listed, classified, and only
then neutralized in the presence of certified witnesses.)"
Wat de terreuraanslagen in het huidige Irak betreft, merkt Hichens op dat het geen aanleiding mag even om het land aan zijn lot over te laten. Integendeel, precies omdat het slecht gaat moet de aanwezigheid van de VS in dat land met nog meer kracht worden verdedigd:
"Those who murder the officials of the United Nations and the
Red Cross, set fire to oil pipelines and blow up water mains, and shoot down
respected clerics outside places of worship are indeed making our point for
us. There is no justifiable way that a country as populous and important as
Iraq can be left at the mercy of such people."
Hoe dan ook maken de terreuraanslagen de oorlog in Hitchens’ ogen niet minder gerechtvaardigd. Nog niet zolang geleden werd de eerste verkozen president van Servië, Zoran Djindjic, vermoord. Je zou dit als wraak van de medestanders van het oude regime kunnen aanzien. Maar maakt dat de interventie in ex-Joegoslavië, om het brutale regime van Milosevic te stoppen, niet méér in plaats van minder gerechtvaardigd?
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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6/11/2003
Latijns-Amerika en het neoliberalisme
Het is niet alleen kommer en kwel in Latijns-Amerika. Neem het voorbeeld van Chili; een land dat sinds twintig jaar een consequent beleid van hervormingen heeft gevoerd. Resultaat: gemiddeld 6% economische groei tussen 1983 en 1999. De armoede is tot de helft teruggebracht, de stelling van economen David Dollar en Aart Kraay bevestigend dat "groei goed is voor de armen".
Sommige elementen in deze hervormingen waren overduidelijk "neoliberaal" van aard: privatiseringen, fiscale hevormingen, exportgerichtheid en liberalisering van handel, privaat pensioensysteem. Anderzijds bestaat er geen twijfel over dat de overheid een belangrijke rol speelt in het uitstippelen van een industriële strategie. En op vlak van kapitaalstromen heeft Chili een voorzichtige houding aangenomen. Maar het land bewijst dat liberalisering en privatisering wel degelijk kan werken: het neoliberalisme is nog lang niet dood.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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6/11/2003
Verkeerde conclusies
We rapporteerden reeds eerder over een Britse studie die zou aantonen dat het kweken van ggo’s negatieve gevolgen zou hebben voor het milieu. Deze studie werd uitgebreid toegelicht in De Morgen van vorige week. Naderhand schreven 114 Britse wetenschappers een brief aan de premier Tony Blair waarin zij hun beklag deden over de conclusies die tegenstanders van ggo’s uit het onderzoek trokken, en het stilzwijgen van de regering daaromtrent. Ook daarover rapporteerden we (De Morgen niet). Wetenschapsjournalist Ronald Bailey heeft de studie nu bekeken en komt tot andere conclusies dan de "anti-ggo’ers":
"(…) if protecting wildlife is the right goal, the higher productivity of genetically enhanced crops means that less land has to be planted to grow food for people, thus leaving more land for nature. So there may be less wildlife in the fields, but more across the whole landscape, after it has been allowed to revert to nature."
Lees de rest.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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5/11/2003
Bush is géén cowboy
Jonathan Rauch stelt dat Bush geen unilateralist is en wel degelijk samenwerkt met andere landen. Frankrijk daarentegen...
"Obviously much of the world opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but to speak of America as isolated or Bush as unilateralist seems an exaggeration, to be charitable. The administration tried hard to get the Security Council to put teeth in its own resolutions against Saddam Hussein. It went to the council not once but twice, when unilateralists said the right number of times was zero. It received support from dozens of countries, including some European biggies (Britain, Spain, Italy, Poland). It sought and obtained the Security Council’s blessing for the occupation. It received $13 billion in reconstruction pledges from many countries. It is getting help from 24,000 foreign troops in Iraq, most of them British and Polish, but with support from more than 30 countries. (More than 50 foreign soldiers have died in Iraq.)
And on other fronts? The administration is insisting on a multilateral approach to North Korea—not grudgingly, as NPR’s Shuster would have it, but in the teeth of allies’ reluctance to get involved. It is trying to mobilize the United Nations on Iran. It has set up a multilateral Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict weapons, with France and Germany among the eight European participants. It recently won a multilateral agreement with 20 Asian and Pacific countries to curb the trade in shoulder-fired missiles.
Bush is not going it alone. He is setting his agenda and then looking for support, rather than the other way around. That is what presidents and countries typically do. It is certainly what France does—and how. France’s intransigence on farm subsidies has been the single greatest impediment to progress at the World Trade Organization. France’s determination to set up an independent European military-planning center risks splitting NATO. France’s refusal to comply with the European Union’s fiscal rules may result in the rules’ collapse. France freely uses its E.U. clout to bully dissenting European countries. It does not shrink from calling on them to "shut up." It did not shrink from announcing it would unilaterally veto any Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Iraq, "whatever the circumstances." This is not exactly team playing, although critics of American unilateralism rarely see fit to mention it."
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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4/11/2003
Goed nieuws over het broeikasteffect
Het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift Nature signaleert een studie waarin aangetoond wordt dat de opwarming van de aarde (door de opwarming van het zeewater) ook positieve effecten kan hebben. Daarbij merkt Nature ook nog het volgende op:
"Using radiocarbon dating, the researchers found that the coral was 7,000 years old. Between 9,000 and 4,000 years ago, sea temperatures in the Atlantic were 2-4 °C warmer than today."
De huidige opwarming is dus geenzins uitzonderlijk, althans niet gemeten aan de hand van het zeewater.
Lees de rest!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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4/11/2003
Ggo’s en De Morgen, deel 2
De Morgen heeft bij mijn weten (nog) niets vermeld over de brief van de 114 wetenschappers aan Tony Blair over ggo’s. Eénzijdige berichtgeving noem ik dat.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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4/11/2003
VTM strikt Raf Coppens
Maak plaats Geert Hoste! Vanaf dit jaar start ook VTM met een eindejaarsconference. Grappenmaker van dienst is de stand up comedian Raf Coppens. Een goede beslissing van VTM, en meer bepaald van Jan Verheyen, want Coppens is beter en origineler dan Hoste. Zijn imitaties van onder andere Johan Museeuw zijn hilarisch. Hoe dan ook worden de eindejaarsfeesten vanaf dit jaar nóg leuker!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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4/11/2003
Do’h! Fox doet zichzelf bijna proces aan!
Homer Simpson slaat weer toe! Of beter gezegd, de makers van de geweldigde animatieserie The Simpsons. Onlangs werd in die reeks een grap uitgehaald met Fox News, het nieuwskanaal van Fox. Daar waren ze zo ontsteld dat ze The Simpsons bijna een proces aandeden. Tot ze beseften dat The Simpsons gemaakt werd door...Fox. Je zou denken dat alleen Homer zelf zulke blunders zou maken. Niet dus. Joehoe!
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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4/11/2003
Protectionisme werkt niet
Vorige week donderdag verscheen in De Standaard een lezersbrief van een zekere Simon Bekaert, medewerker op het kabinet van Vlaams minister Renaat Landuyt. In de brief pleitte Bekaert voor wat "ouderwets protectionisme". Ik schreef hierop een antwoord. Dit antwoord staat vandaag in De Standaard. Omdat ik geen links kan voorzien naar beide lezersbrieven, volgt hier alvast mijn versie.
Protectionisme werkt niet
Was me dat schrikken! In uw krant verscheen een brief waarin Simon Bekaert, medeweker kabinet van Renaat Landuyt, pleit voor "ouderwets protectionisme". Gelukkig blijft bij de concrete maatregelen die hij voorstelt (vorming, innovatie…) weinig van dat protectionisme over. Gelukkig want in tegenstelling tot de auteur, ben ik van mening dat vrijhandel wél goed is voor welvaart en economische groei. De wereldwijde depressie van de jaren dertig werd sterk veroorzaakt door de protectionistische maatregelen van de VS en Europa. Argentinië was inderdaad één van de meest welvarende landen van de wereld rond 1900, onder andere dankzij vrijhandel en het aantrekken van buitenlands (Brits) kapitaal. Studies tonen aan dat ontwikkelingslanden die zich relatief open opstellen en handelsbelemmeringen afbreken de jongste decennia het snelst zijn gegroeid. In Brazilië ging economische groei in de jaren zestig gepaard met sterke groei in export en import. In de periode 1965-1973, door specialisten bestempeld als een van "voorzichtige (handels)liberalisering" groeide Brazilië sterker dan in de periode 1974-1980, tijdperk van hernieuwde "import-substitutie", kortweg protectionisme. In de VS zijn sinds de inwerkingtreding van de vrijhandelszone NAFTA de lonen gestegen en zijn er miljoenen jobs gecreëerd.
Protectionisme is onwenselijk en werkt niet. Een Ford Escort heeft minder Amerikaanse onderdelen (60%) dan een "Japanse" Honda Civic (75%). Protectionistische maatregelen en subsidies ter waarde van 23 miljard dollar hebben niet kunnen verhinderen dat het aantal jobs in de Amerikaanse staalindustrie met bijna twee derde is verminderd. Dan zwijgen we nog over de negatieve gevolgen die de hogere staalprijzen hebben voor de gebruikers van staal, zoals de auto-industrie. En goederen die meer verhandeld worden, kennen dalende en lagere prijzen, wat goed is voor de consumenten, de "mensen" dus, en niet zomaar de happy few. Precies protectionisme is er voor de happy few (de werknemers in de sectoren die staal gebruiken versus de beschermde staalarbeiders bijvoorbeeld: in de VS een verhouding van 57 tegen 1).
Niemand beweert dat vrijhandel op zichzelf volstaat voor economische groei. Daarom is er zeker ruimte voor de maatregelen die Simon Bekaert voorstelt. Maar we gaan toch niet terugkeren naar "ouderwets protectionisme" zeker?
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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3/11/2003
Edward Hugh linkt naar ivanjanssens.be
Edward Hugh, die zelf een aantal blogsites heeft, waaronder Bonoboland en India Economy Watch, heeft me een vriendelijke mail gestuurd. Blijkt dat hij mij heeft opgenomen in zijn lijst van bloggers. Thank you, Edward! Hij vertelde er ook nog bij dat wellicht weinigen het zullen verstaan, omdat ze het Nederlands niet meester zijn. Geen nood, er zijn plannen voor een Engelse versie. Maar eerst nog de Nederlandstalige site uitbouwen. Zo zal er binnenkort een commentaarsectie komen.
Gepost door/Posted by: ivan
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1/11/2003
Landbouwsubsidies
The Guardian, de De Morgen van Groot-Brittannië, en dus niet mijn favoriete krant, heeft desondanks onlangs een heel lovenswaardig initiatief genomen. Een website met als doel de perverse landbouwsubsidies van Europa en de VS aan te klagen. Volgens The Guardian zijn ze "economische en sociale waanzin". In dit artikel, waar het doel van de site nader wordt toegelicht, geeft de krant een aantal spraakmakende voorbeelden: suikerbieten, katoen, subsidies op te hoesten door de Europese en Amerikaanse belastingbetaler ten voordele van grote landbouwbaronieën, handelsbelemmeringen om landbouwproducten buiten te houden die in ontwikkelingslanden op efficiëntere wijze worden geproduceerd.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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1/11/2003
Ggo's en De Morgen
Vlaanderens meest kritische en onafhankelijk dagblad De Morgen heeft ook zo zijn eigen dogma’s. Eén van die dogma’s is dat genetische gemanipuleerde organismen (ggo’s) slecht zijn voor mens en milieu. Zo was De Morgen er onlangs met de (ongemanipuleerde) kippen bij toen een Brits onderzoek zich kritisch toonde over de gevolgen van ggo’s voor het milieu. Ben ik nu benieuwd of De Morgen ook aandacht zal besteden aan deze brief van 114 Britse wetenschappers aan eerste minister Blair. In die brief beklagen de wetenschappers er zich over dat de Britse regering zwijgt over het onderzoek en de verkeerde conclusies die door tegenstanders van ggo’s uit dat rapport worden getrokken. Ergo, de Britse regering onderneemt niets tegen de sfeer van intimidatie en daden van regelrechte sabotage tegen wetenschappers die zich bezighouden met onderzoek naar en ontwikkeling van ggo’s. Heel interessante brief. De BBC en The Independent rapporteren erover. Nu De Morgen nog.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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1/11/2003
Deindustrialisatie en welvaart
Door de perikelen van Ford Genk is het thema "deindustrialisatie" opnieuw in het nieuws. Bijna altijd wordt deindustrialisatie dan als negatief ervaren: voor de werkgelegenheid en voor de welvaart. Wat zou een land nu zijn zonder industrie? Arm en zonder jobs! Maar kijk eens naar de lijst met de meest welvarende landen in de wereld (inkomen per inwoner). Op nummer één staat Luxemburg, met grote voorsprong op de VS. In de top vijf staan ook nog de Kaaimaneilanden, Bermuda en San Marino. Nu is mij niet echt bekend in welke industriële sectoren Luxemburg, de Kaaimaneilanden, Bermuda en San Marino uitblinken. Misschien is industrie dan toch niet zo belangrijk? Maar waarom geven wij dan al die subsidies?
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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1/11/2003
Wapenexport
Wie zijn de belangrijkste wapenexporteurs? Ik hoor u al zeggen: de VS natuurlijk, verschrikkelijke imperialisten die, onder leiding van George Bush de wereld willen onderwerpen.
Maar wat blijkt? Als je het bekijkt per hoofd van de bevolking staan de VS pas op de tiende plaats. Op nummers twee en vier staan meer "vredelievende" Noord-Europese landen, namelijk Zweden en Noorwegen. Aanvoerder is Macedonië. België staat op de 22ste plaats: per belg exporteert ons land voor zeven dollar (iets meer dan zes euro)aan wapens. Hier is de grafiek. (Via Tyler Cowen)
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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18/10/2003
Here we go....
Spannend he? Een weblog in het Nederlands. De Nederlandse minister van financiën Gerrit Zalm heeft er één. Ik nu ook!
In Amerika bestaan er talloze, in het Engels natuurlijk. Een "kleine" greep hieruit vind je rechts op deze pagina.
Bedoeling is mijn kijk te geven op het gebeuren in de wereld en in ons land. Als alles goed gaat komt er zelfs een Engelstalige versie. Want we zijn ambitieus!
Blijf deze weblog in elk geval regelmatig bezoeken en...alvast veel leesplezier met de links hiernaast.
Gepost door/Posted by: Ivan
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7/09/2003
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Gepost door/Posted by: Paul Derboven
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