Category: Globalisation

Alternatives to Globalization “delivering the goods”

A recent discussion of problems with Apple using humans as machines to build iPhones, iPods and iPads prompted the argument that “A major problem in mounting a challenge to globalization is that it delivers the goods” and that it’s unlikely that people will give up their iPhones. The situation isn’t bleak. People can adopt a few strategies, as individuals, to lessen the problem.

The first is to buy smart phones, music players and hand-held computers from smaller manufacturers. Let’s say there are 10 companies, all using Chinese human labor to make such products. How does it benefit one to go with a smaller manufacturer?

This is how. Bankers love large companies making a lot of profit as advertising can make their products highly desirable, and the profits entice investors to buy the large company’s shares. Then it’s a matter of bringing down the company and raking in the loot... naive investors lose, bankers win. Now, if the consumer were to prevent any company from getting large by buying products from smaller manufacturers, bankers have less to gain by bringing down a small company here and there, and can only benefit by bringing down an entire industry or the stock market in general, which they can’t do very frequently or else investors will lose confidence in the stock market.

Notice that buying from smaller manufacturers may also cost less as there’s no premium paid for a top-notch brand name. Also note that the extras that come with some top-notch products aren’t worth the price. Would you rather pay a $200 premium for a smart phone with 1080p video playback capability when the screen size makes this functionality useless and the functionality is useful only if you connect it to a 1920 X 1080 monitor, in which case you might as well use any computer built in recent years to send 1080p video to the monitor, or upgrade the graphics card of an older computer for a lot less, or buy, for less, a blu-ray player capable of playing mkv, mov, divx, mp4 and other formats from a plugged-in USB drive?

The second strategy is do-it-yourself projects. The ARM-based computer board at the hear of smart phones and hand-held computers can be purchased separately. The open-hardware beagleboard and beaglebone, for instance, sell for $150 and $89, respectively, and offer 720p video playback and muscle for ordinary computing tasks equivalent to the first generation of iPad. Other alternatives, some even cheaper, comprise of the leopardboard, craneboard, pandora, etc.

Now, it may be a hassle for some to separately buy a capacitive touch screen, cables, etc., and find a suitable enclosure for the computer board, but there are some people who’ve already done the job, like the Grégoire Gentil group at always innovating, who offer a ready-made smart book based on open-hardware, and they even offer, for free, a multi-boot system allowing one to switch between four open-source operating systems, depending on whether one wishes to use the unit as a smart phone or as a general purpose computer.

To use the unit as a phone, you can use voice-over-IP (VOIP) technologies such as skype (avoid google talk). To get cell phone functionality, you’re better off obtaining a barebones cellphone, which service providers will usually throw-in for free, using things along the lines of Grégoire Gentil’s products for your other smart phone and hand-held computer needs. Or maybe solutions comprising of a dongle that will let you use your unit with cell phone networks already exist.

Aside from these individual steps, there’s always organizing in specific ways to target the bankers.

Posted by R-news on Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 03:29 PM in Activism,  Business & Industry,  Economics & Finance,  Globalisation
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Bankers Making Apple Run Sweatshops in China

The sweatshops Apple runs in China have recently come up in the news. Instead of using machines to assemble iPhones, iPods and iPads, Apple is using humans as machines. A factory in Shenzhen employs 430,000 people who work in halls with up to 20,000 to 30,000 people each. Workers aren’t allowed to talk to each other, there are no recreational breaks and people work under video surveillance. Some of the workers are children in their early teens, who are kept away from sight when inspectors arrive. Whereas the official work day is 8 hours, the standard shift is 12 hours, which commonly extends to 14-16 hours, at 70 cents per hour.

People asking for overtime are shrugged off and blacklisted; if they resign in protest, they’d have a difficult time seeking another job. Seeking to unionize is an imprisonable offense.

Occupational hazards include exposure to neurotoxic agents used to polish glass, such as hexane, whereas safer cleansers aren’t used because they take longer to evaporate. Monotonous, repetitive work leads to carpal tunnel syndrome and other disabilities. Those with disabling injuries are out of luck.

Many of these human-bots haven’t even seen in person, let alone held, a complete, functional iPad or another Apple product in their hand to evaluate what it is that they’re building. And when they sleep, they do so in cubicles packed with bunk beds, like prisoners in a crowded facility.

And to think that some people would describe this despicable situation as a wealth transfer from the the West to the East in terms of manufacturing and other jobs sent abroad! Superficially, the earnings of these workers have easily quadrupled compared to their working in rice farms earlier, but look at their living conditions, and watch as the purchasing power of money keeps going down because the government borrows from bankers, at interest, money the bankers create out of thin air.

If the Chinese masses work in farms, produce enough food for themselves, produce surplus food to barter against petroleum, medicine, etc., and the government creates it own money without debt, the Chinese can live independently and can sustain themselves, whereas now their economy’s in the hands of the international bankers while many of their people work like machines, sustaining mechanical injuries and damage from exposure to toxic chemicals.

The West doesn’t benefit either. Many Western consumers are precluded from buying bling bling such as iPads because of a lack of disposable income, and a good proportion of those who buy such bling bling do so by borrowing money, for which they’ll pay dearly in terms of interest.

Apple could technically improve worker conditions by cutting its profit margins, but is unable to do so because it’s a publicly traded corporation, and financial corporations have enough of a stake in it to dictate policies, the bottom line being increasing profit to attract investors. When the time’s ripe, these financial corporations will bring down the stock market, thus effecting a wealth transfer from the masses of naive investors to the bankers behind the financial corporations.

Many of the financial corporations having a stake in major non-financial corporations in major economies such as America’s are located offshore as well as many of the bankers. This diminishes the odds of a successful political revolt against the bankers. And we can see that the outsourcing of manufacturing and numerous other jobs from the major Western economies is further insurance against the same as weakened Western masses are less capable of revolt.

Posted by R-news on Friday, January 27, 2012 at 03:39 PM in Business & Industry,  Economics & Finance,  Globalisation,  World Affairs
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Supply and demand: The economics of mass immigration

It was claimed that the devastation of the Third World by bankers creates plenty of would-be economic immigrants. The retort was that this is a Judeo-Marxist canard used to induce ‘white guilt’ and justify various ‘aid’ and ‘refugee’ programs. The retort added that parts of Africa in 1812 had yet to see the wheel, the implication being that Third world nations have been built or economically enhanced by the West. The retort also blames slaughters and devastation in the Third World on their natives alone.

Let’s see. Civilization shouldn’t be confused with economic security. An isolated hunter-gatherer tribe living in a jungle typically has sufficient food to eat, clothing and living structures; they are willing and able to provide for themselves. Whereas in a modern civilization such as the U.S., tens of millions are unable to provide food for themselves, in spite of being willing and able to work, and must depend on government handouts such as food stamps, and there are millions of homeless people.

The reason for the economic problems of Western nations is that malicious bankers issue and control money, which is also the case for nearly all Third World nations. So how does the Third world fare under banker control?

For a while now, this is how the international bankers have dealt with the Third World [some things apply to some Western nations also]:

If I recall correctly, Professor Joseph Stiglitz won a Nobel Prize for his work on the following 4-step process.

PRIVATIZATION
Bribe a nation’s leaders to trim billions off the sale price of national assets.

CAPITAL MARKET LIBERALIZATION
Repeal laws that tax money going abroad. International bankers pump in money to gamble on property, currency. When the economy starts to look promising, they pull out their money, devastating the nation.

Now the nation needs emergency IMF loans, which the IMF provides by creating the money for loans out of thin air. Two conditions are attached. The nation has to raise its interest rates considerably. These high interest rates will impoverish the nation. The other condition for the loan is that the electricity, water, telephone and gas systems are effectively sold to international corporations.

MARKET-BASED PRICING
The prices of food, water and domestic gas are raised. This results in social unrest, possibly riots. When massive demonstrations or riots occur, investors start pulling out their money, the government goes bankrupt. Foreign financial corporations can now buy many of the nation’s assets at rock-bottom prices.

FREE TRADE
Now international corporations move into developing nations, whereas Third World agricultural products are barricaded from the West. The bankers impose extortionate tariffs, which these countries have to pay for in branded pharmaceuticals, causing soaring rates of death and disease. And so on.

Naturally, Third World nations will experience significant emigration pressures. Residents of some European nations will better understand what the Third World experiences when austerirty measures in their nations become more severe to pay the interests on loans they need from banks.

As of now, people are rioting over gas prices in Nigeria, but before one brings in the violence proneness of blacks, take a guess at what’s caused the rise and toward which purpose. One has to wonder how many other instances of rioting in Third World nations have their root cause in what the international bankers do, not in violence that would occur no matter what. These international bankers are behind numerous wars in the Western hemisphere, and they surely haven’t left the Third world in peace.

Notice that some black African nations are resource-rich but the masses live in poverty. Is this due to the corruption of their elite? They have corrupt elite, but if this were the reason, there would be lots of black billionaires [U.S. dollars] in some African nations, whereas the natural resource-related wealth is siphoned out by the international bankers, in the manner detailed above, and scraps, in comparison, are given to the corrupt elite.

People complain about me focusing on money and the community disproportionately controlling it when there are serious immigration issues to be discussed, but what’s causing the immigration issues? It takes more than merely opening Western borders to immigrants; Third Worlders need an incentive to emigrate en masse, too.

Will the masses be willing to go to a land far, far away where people speak a different language and have a very different culture if the masses have a reasonable income/sustenance where they live, and live in a relatively peaceful society? Will the masses be willing to give up the security of their existence for discordance, learning and re-learning skills in a foreign nation and the uncertainty of having a similar level of economic security there? These are important questions to reflect on. A desire to emigrate will be true of some individuals, but not the masses if there’s basic economic security [food, shelter, clothing, base medical facilities] and no warfare or civil strife.

But economic devastation provides a strong incentive for mass emigration pressure in the Third World. And thus we have the demand and supply of contemporary mass immigration into Western nations:

Demand

The bankers need to flood the nations where their diaspora live to undermine ethnic solidarity among the host populations and keep the citizens occupied with all the troubles that accompany racial and cultural diversity. This way the bankers reduce the chances of a public or political revolt that vanquishes them.

Supply

Economically devastated Third Worlders naturally want to emigrate en masse.

So is it wise to complain about immigration levels and focus on blacks, Hispanics, Muslims----like Amren, Vdare, the masses of the “alternative right” or “Third position” crowds----or is it wise to aim for the root cause, which lies in malicious bankers controlling the money supply? And is it wise to just focus on the money issue or also expose some of the other major crimes of these people, such as 9/11? They bring in all these immigrants to undermine ethnic cohesion in the West. Complaining about immigration doesn’t help and exacerbates division. But the money issue and 9/11 are of universal significance and unite the divided against the bankers. And some people complain of conspiracy and detraction from the important issues, such as immigration and multiculturalism, when 9/11 is brought up!

Posted by J Richards on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 12:35 AM in Demographics,  Economics & Finance,  Globalisation,  Immigration,  That Question Again,  White Nationalism
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The Bear’s Lair: When labor becomes a commodity

by Martin Hutchinson

The extraordinary rise in commodity prices, at the beginning of a global cyclical upswing, is beginning to reorder the pecking order of the world economy. Together with the advances made by China and India in the last decade, it is producing an entirely new world order, which many will find uncomfortable. In it, commodities, derided for decades as unimportant, have become scarce resources, to be guarded and managed with the utmost care. Conversely human labor and skill, on the basis of which the glories of human civilization were built, is entering into a state of gigantic glut.

The current commodities boom is qualitatively different from those of the past. In previous commodities booms, such as those of 1972-73 or 2006-08, the global economy was operating close to capacity, and indeed the boom was an important indicator that full capacity was about to be reached. The booms were accompanied by wage inflation and in both cases resulted in price inflation, although in 2007-08 the price inflation was aborted by the financial crash before it could really get hold.

Continued...

Posted by Guest Blogger on Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 06:06 PM in Globalisation
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Nick Griffin on Copenhagen and the man-made global warming scam

At his blog Simon Darby has uploaded the first of two videos of Nick Griffin speaking to camera after the Copenhagen failure.  I can’t embed it here yet, but this is the link.

I will add the link to the second video when it is available.

Here it is.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, December 20, 2009 at 08:29 AM in Globalisation
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Multiculturalism as a process of globalisation

by K R Bolton
Academy of Social and Political Research

Multicultural politics, including that concerned with immigration, is a method of social engineering. Whoever raises a voice in public in opposition or even merely of caution is pilloried as a “racist” and a “reactionary”. Conversely, those who champion multiculturalism are upheld as the paragons of ‘progress’ and humanitarianism. Yet behind the moral façade multiculturalism is a cynical stratagem, an important part of the process of globalisation in the interests of a small, self-appointed plutocratic elite. This essay examines how multiculturalism is an aspect of globalisation.

“See, capitalism is not fundamentally racist—it can exploit racism for its purposes, but racism isn’t built into it. Capitalism basically wants people to be interchangeable cogs, and differences among them, such as on the basis of race, usually are not functional. I mean, they may be functional for a period, like if you want a super-exploited workforce or something, but those situations are kind of anomalous. Over the long term, you can expect capitalism to be anti-racist - just because it’s anti-human. And race is, in fact, a human characteristic - there’s no reason why it should be a negative characteristic, but it is a human characteristic. So therefore identifications based on race interfere with the basic ideal that people should be available just as consumers and producers, interchangeable cogs who will purchase all the junk that’s produced - that’s their ultimate function, and any other properties they might have are kind of irrelevant, and usually a nuisance.”
Noam Chomsky

It is ironic that an intellectual championed in particular by the anarchist-Left has given such a cogent definition of the motivating force behind multiculturalism. Among the numerous references to Chomsky made by the Left his diagnosis of capitalism as being “anti-racist” because it aims to create a society of humans as nothing more than “interchangeable cogs”, does not receive the same attention as his other views. As Chomsky states, individuals cannot function at an optimum level as producers and consumers if there are racial or what we might further categorise as cultural and national, divisions.

Chomsky is outside the mainstream of Leftist ideology, which sees humanity and the individual in precisely the same terms as capitalism sees humanity as defined by Chomsky in the above passage. Both capitalism and Marxism are globalist, and both are reductionist in seeing economic factors as the primary determinants of human behaviour and history.  Marx himself was not adverse to Free Trade capitalism. He supported Free Trade insofar as he saw it as a dialectical catalyst for the destruction of national boundaries, which would internationalise “the proletariat” and eventually lead to a global system. Global capitalists maintain the same outlook today. Marx’s analysis in regard to Free Trade was correct, although his alternative is nothing more than to change the ownership of production and distribution. Marx said of Free Trade:

“National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the modern of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish faster.”

Today’s global corporate executives and planners concur with Marx. Marx further identified “protectionism” as the conservative position, Free Trade as subversive and revolutionary. Those – mainly political scientists and journalists, especially in the English-speaking world – who insist on defining “conservatism” (sic) as Free Trade liberalism, should return to an actual source; in this instance Marx, to re-evaluate their definitions:

Continued...

Posted by Guest Blogger on Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 07:02 AM in Globalisation
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Panic in Pittsburgh: G20 Thread

Take a good look at the anarchists. We may be seeing a lot more of them. One can hope.

more videos below the fold

Continued...

Posted by Søren Renner on Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 06:22 PM in Globalisation
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Predator capitalists in the capital

It seems impossibly fanciful, almost like a script for a Bond movie.  A clutch of mega-corporations hatches a plan for the global control of an absolute fundamental for life itself: food.  The plan calls not simply for the global domination of food supply, but for placing Nature beyond the law so farmers and growers must buy their seeds from the corporations.  And because those seeds are genetically manipulated to produce barren plants, they must do it afresh every drilling season.

Cue the suave, unkillable good guy who always steals the villain’s very delectable girlfriend?  ‘Fraid not this time.  It’s down to freedom-loving Americans to save the world from predatory capitalism, with maybe some help from Ron Paul.  There’s about a week left in which to inform Congress about right and wrong as they pertain to this bill.

From that last link (Campaign for Liberty):-

Pay special attention to
Section 3 which is the definitions portion of the bill-read in it’s entirety.
section 103, 206 and 207- read in it’s entirety.
Red flags I found and I am sure there are more…........
Legally binds state agriculture depts to enforcing federal guidelines effectively taking away the states power to do anything other than being food police for the federal dept.
Effectively criminalizes organic farming but doesn’t actually use the word organic.
Effects anyone growing food even if they are not selling it but consuming it.
Effects anyone producing meat of any kind including wild game. 
Legislation is so broad based that every aspect of growing or producing food can be made illegal.  There are no specifics which is bizarre considering how long the legislation is.  
Section 103 is almost entirely about the administrative aspect of the legislation.  It will allow the appointing of officials from the factory farming corporations and lobbyists, and classify them as experts and allow them to determine and interpret the legislation.  Who do you think they are going to side with?  
Section 206 defines what will be considered a food production facility and what will be enforced up all food production facilities.  The wording is so broad based that a backyard gardener could be fined and more.
Section 207 requires that the state’s agriculture dept act as the food police and enforce the federal requirements.  This takes away the states’ power and is in violation of the 10th Amendment.

An MR reader sent me the following clip, which is actually of a guy reading an Op-ed News article titled “Monsanto’s Dream Bill”:-

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 at 08:40 PM in Globalisation
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Global currency system comes closer

The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard published a pretty hard-hitting article today, filled with lurid references to nations in deep financial crisis.  Those I have heard so much of since September 2008, I am rapidly developing an incapacity to be alarmed.  No, the interesting thing about this article was the following stunning admission of where things will go:-

The sums needed are beyond the limits of the IMF, which has already bailed out Hungary, Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, Iceland, and Pakistan – and Turkey next – and is fast exhausting its own $200bn (€155bn) reserve.  We are nearing the point where the IMF may have to print money for the world, using arcane powers to issue Special Drawing Rights.

Forget monetary reform of fractional reserve banking (which allows banks to create a nation’s money-supply as debt out of thin air).  You, Ron Paul and everyone who didn’t lose billions out of the crisis may think that restoring the right of democratic nations to coin their currency directly, as required in the US Constitution, is the answer.  But we are, Evans-Pritchard says, going to get a global fiat currency.  The EU agrees, and at the end of last month formally presented a case for a global currency system to the new American administration.

Now, at a time like this there should always be a gentleman born to Jewish parents who can be found leading the intellectual charge.  And, as it happens, there is.  The economist Joseph Stiglitz, a former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank and author of Making Globalization Work, has been the point man for the global currency.  Here he is being interviewed by some outfit named Share the World’s Resources:-

Q: Are you saying that we would need a “currency basket” in order to secure stability?

A: (What is needed is) Bringing all the currencies, like the SDRs (special drawing rights), but SDRs have only been periodic. Make this more permanent.

Q: At the famous international economic conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, which established a postwar global monetary and financial order, John Maynard Keynes, who represented Britain, proposed the creation of a world currency unit called the Bancor. Are you talking about a similar type of currency basket? Would that be the kind of “basket” you had in mind?

A: Exactly, in my book I argue that that’s what we need. It’s a multilateral system. We need to have a new institutional framework and that’s why I’m hopeful that there’s the beginning of a discussion to have an international meeting, and that’s one of the things I hope will come out of that.

Q: Do you think we need a second version of the Bretton Woods conference?

A: This is a “Bretton Woods moment.”

Of course, he means “This is a Stiglitz moment.”  It is also a moment when the nation state, upon whose political existence the defence of human bio-diversity depends, takes another long step towards dissolution.

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 04:28 AM in Globalisation
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No Global Age, only globalised greed

The blog has experienced a serious technical problem over the last few days, which prevented new postings.  Thankfully, James resolved it, and I’ve been pitched back into the world of political news and thought.  And what I have been trying to get a handle on has been that brief and very strange, conflicted marriage of radical leftist idealism, political establishments generally, American national interest and corporate greed which is, or was, the movement for globalisation.

I was thrust into this line of country by a news snippet two days ago about the resignation of Brazil’s political heroine and Environment Minister, Marina Silva.

“Environmental campaigners say her resignation is a major setback for the rainforest in Brazil.

“Brazil is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment,” said Sergio Leitao, director of public policy for Greenpeace in Brazil.

“The minister is leaving because the pressure on her for taking the measures she took against deforestation has become unbearable,” he added.

Economic development

Marina Silva has blamed the increasing deforestation of the Amazon on Brazilian cattle ranchers and farmers.

She had unsuccessfully opposed several government infrastructure projects in the Amazon rainforest, including two big hydroelectric dams on the River Madeira, and a major new road.

According to Brazilian media reports, she was also believed to be dismayed at the recent appointment of another minister to act as a coordinator for the government’s newly announced strategy for the Amazon.

The government’s decision to authorise genetically modified grains, and the construction of a new nuclear power plant, also went against the minister’s environmental concerns.

Correspondents say Ms Silva’s resignation will reinforce a perception that President Lula is more concerned with economic development than conservation.

What really did for her was the strongly rising cost of commodities on world markets.  Money, in other words ... and weak politicians.  These include the one-time champion of workers rights and two-times elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.  But this is the sad, too too predictable story of globalisation everywhere.

Now, let’s rewind eighteen years and see how it came to this.  It means going back to the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Anyone past his twenties will likely remember watching the whole process of revolution in the east unfold.  It was an extraordinary and breathless passage of time, the like of which we simply did not believe we would witness in our lifetimes.  Those involved, of course, knew that communism as ideology was an empty shell.  Homo sovieticus had nothing to field against the national soul of the western satellites.  But what was not known was how weak the state structure itself was.

But, also, what I never dreamt as I watched the images on the television screen was how little the hard-left in the West, which had supported the workers’ paradise throughout, was inclined to walk into history with Homo sovieticus.  Instead, it stampeded into new political causes.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, May 16, 2008 at 07:50 PM in Globalisation
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The Davos Question

On Saturday the little big men of the World Economic Forum checked out of their Davos hotels and made the hop home in the company Gulfstream.  Along with the customary hookers and political whores, the high-powered networking and, doubtless for some, the plain high, our heroes left behind all that damned public caring - at least, for another year.

Actually, the caring thing was pretty well done this year.  They concocted a public relations exercise involving a somewhat bland question:-

What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?

There was a lot of hot air vented about knowledge and poverty, climate change, and water.  But the hot button issues among the real players were the decline of the dollar as the world currency and the threat of a US recession.  These merely reflects the corporate-heavy interests of the Davos “community”.  Of the issue of the rights and interests of real people and peoples there was, of course, no sign.  Or almost no sign.  This report appeared this morning in the lower middle-class rag, the Sunday Express:-

EUROPEANS THINK ISLAM IS DANGEROUS

AN “overwhelming majority” of Europeans believe immigration from Islamic countries is a threat to their traditional way of life, a survey revealed last night.  The poll, carried out across 21 countries, found “widespread anti-immigration sentiment”, but warned Europe’s Muslim population will treble in the next 17 years.  It reported “a severe deficit of trust is found between the Western and Muslim communities”, with most people wanting less interaction with the Muslim world.

Last night an MP warned it showed that political leaders in Britain who preach the benefits of unlimited immigration were dangerously out of touch with the public.

The study, whose authors include the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, was commissioned for leaders at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.  It reports “a growing fear among Europeans of a perceived Islamic threat to their cultural identities, driven in part by immigration from predominantly Muslim nations”.

Now, I’ve been all over the WEF’s brave new website and I can’t find a trace of the former Arch-Songster’s study.  Which is odd.  The only half-useful mention of migration which crops up via a word search on the site concerns this curious working session:-

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, January 27, 2008 at 08:09 PM in Globalisation
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The Bear’s Lair: Eroding Western living standards

Here is Martin Hutchinson’s latest at Prudent Bear, quietly informing bovine optimists that globalisation carries profound and profoundly depressing implications for more than the benighted working class in the West.

Tata Motors’ emergence as front-runner to buy Jaguar and Land Rover from the ailing Ford brings one question uppermost to a commentator sitting at a wealthy Western desk: Precisely which economic sectors can be relied upon in the future to provide jobs for Westerners at wages higher than are obtainable in the Third World?  Will there continue to be opportunities to improve Western living standards, or are those living standards destined to descend to some kind of population-weighted average between Boston and Benin?

Tata is a typical and highly capable example of that new breed: the third world multinational company. Part of the multi-industry Tata Group, over a century old, from which it had access to both capital in its formative years and steel currently, it has established itself as the premier manufacturer of light trucks in India and as one of the top three automobile manufacturers. At the bottom of the market, it has announced plans to being out a 100,000 rupee (about $2,500 currently) automobile, which if successful will undercut its major competition by more than 30% and greatly expand the market for automobiles among the still impoverished Indian people.

Conventional Western business analysts have no problem with Tata manufacturing mini-cars for the Indian market, or indeed for developing country markets in Africa and elsewhere. They imagine that Tata is able to use its comparative advantage of cheaper labor to squeeze costs out of the manufacturing process, thus achieving what in the West would be an impossibly low price. They point knowingly to the expensive environmental features that the new automobile will lack, and imagine smugly that the it will be both tiny and of low quality, adequate for the noble impoverished of the Third World, but not seriously to be imagined as competition on the roads of London, New York or Stuttgart.

The announcement that Tata is to buy Land Rover and Jaguar has thus caused a considerable amount of cognitive dissonance. Land Rover and Jaguar are both icons of British automobile manufacture, hand crafted by generations of British skilled labor. Admittedly in the 1970s Jaguar’s quality control became so poor that Jaguars rivaled the Moskvich or the Yugo for frequency of repairs, but since 1979 or so quality has improved and the marque has established a cherished if not particularly profitable niche among the luxury automobiles of the world.  Moreover, would Western buyers shell out the substantial cost of a Jaguar if they knew it had been manufactured in India; after all, how could the quality be relied upon?

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 at 02:47 PM in Globalisation
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Bilderberg 2007: Welcome to the Lunatic Fringe

With thanks to Flavio Gonzales at Troy’s forum, I’m pasting - without additional comment - the meat of an article on Bilderberg 07 by Daniel Estulin
GW

The delegates at Bilderberg 2007: Istanbul, Turkey May 31-June 3

This year’s delegation will once again include all of the most important politicians, businessmen, central bankers, European Commissioners and executives of the western corporate press. They will be joined at the table by leading representatives of the European Royalty, led by Queen Beatrix, the daughter of the Bilderberg founder, former Nazi, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Bilderberger President, Etienne Davignon, Vice Chairman, Suez-Tractebel from Belgium. According to Bilderberg Steering Committee list which this author had access to, the following names have now been confirmed as official Bilderberg attendees for this year’s conference (In alphabetical order):-

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, May 21, 2007 at 10:22 AM in Globalisation
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The Bear’s Lair: International Perspective

Here’s Monday’s piece from Martin, posted originally at Prudent Bear.  A dose of cold realism for Mr Wolfowitz and the World Bank.

The World Bank gave the developing world an unexpected Christmas present Wednesday, when it unveiled its annual “Global Economic Prospects” report, looked out to 2030 and projected a higher developing country growth rate than in 1980-2005 and a huge emerging Third World middle class.  Since it’s the job of the Bear’s Lair to deflate unwarranted optimism, the report represents a challenge that must be addressed.

The World Bank stated its expectation that GDP per capita in the developing world would grow 3.1% per annum as against 2.1% in 1980-2005. Its central argument is that the rapidly emerging global middle class, 1.2 billion strong in 2030, three times its 2005 size, with family incomes between $18,000 and $60,000, will realize their true interest and vote for World Bank-friendly policies such as open trade barriers and globalist foreign policies.

Even were they to do such a thing, it’s doubtful what effect they could have, since they would still be far outnumbered by the 6.8 billion impoverished souls who gain little from globalization and who would have to depend on benign “pro-poor policies” voted by the emerging middle class for the meager handouts that made their miserable existence possible.

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Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 08:56 PM in Globalisation
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The Bear’s Lair: Trading in intellect

It’s Monday, and this week prudentbear.com ran the Hutchinson take on property rights and the brief and likely fatal joys of outsourcing.  The bearish nature of this message runs with the dissident grain and is a clever man’s way of introducing reasonable doubt into the conventional-thinking, mainstream mind.

GW

In a world in which information is an increasingly important commodity and intellect is the principal means of producing such information, David Ricardo’s 1817 Doctrine of Comparative Advantage may no longer be valid.  However the theory that free trade enriches all participants, central to modern globalization, depends crucially on Ricardo, with protectionists being denounced (sometimes correctly) by professional economists as economic illiterates.  What then is an economically literate framework for trade in a post-Ricardo world?

In his 1990 paper “Endogenous Technological Change” economist Paul Romer showed that economic growth is caused primarily by the spread and interaction of information, some but not all of which is “excludable” in that others can be prevented from using it once it’s created.  As an instance of information-driven technological change, he instanced Francis Cabot Lowell’s 1811 industrial espionage on British power looms, through which he created the U.S. textile industry.

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Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, October 31, 2006 at 06:45 PM in Globalisation
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The Bear’s Lair: Is the world global?

This afternoon my OE Inbox mysteriously received Martin Hutchinson’s latest Bear’s Lair piece.  This one considers the prospects for the globalising economy.  I am very pleased to publish it here.

The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, is well deserved. While imperfect, his invention of micro-lending is an important tool to make the free market system work better for the world’s poor. Nevertheless, the vision that Grameen represents, of a peaceful integrated “globalized” world in which can all prosper, is increasingly coming under threat. In 1996, with Communism defeated, Bill Clinton in the White House and the Internet rising to prominence, a globalized “Washington Consensus” world seemed the inevitable future. However, it’s not 1996 any more.

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Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, October 16, 2006 at 11:23 AM in Globalisation
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A tale of two Indias

A gated development for the subcontinent’s super-rich ... and a funeral for a cotton farmer, forced into suicide because of spiralling poverty. India’s economic growth is dazzling but, in the new, globalised era, its inequalities are becoming even more polarised, discovers Randeep Ramesh

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Posted by Phil Peterson on Wednesday, April 5, 2006 at 06:59 PM in Globalisation
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Ocean Frontier Fertility: The Global Prospects

The prospects are great for ecologically imposed patriarchy enhancing the fertility of whites via oceanic frontiers.  The majority of the earth’s surface remains not only uncultivated, but not biologically productive despite the presence of adequate sunlight and near-adequate nutrients. If recent experiments in iron fertilization of high nitrogen low chlorophyll oceanic surface regions are any indication, the primary ingredient lacking is the pioneering spirit that led to the cultivation and increased carrying capacity of the Anglosphere’s frontier territories: The United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.  It is reasonable to expect that the Anglosphere alone could increase its numbers by a factor of 10, relatively unmolested by multicultural supremacists, during this pioneering renaissance and maintain if not improve the quality of their populations.  Other, less sea-faring European peoples could enjoy smaller but nevertheless profound population and territorial relief.  Moreover this population increase could be very rapid if the fertility rates of the United States frontier is any guide.  This is a prospect that seems plausible in no other way short of world war.

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Posted by James Bowery on Thursday, March 9, 2006 at 11:19 PM in Demographics,  European Nationalism,  Globalisation,  Libertarianism,  Science & Technology,  White Nationalism
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Compare and contrast

Here is a photo of the EU parliament

And here is a photo of the former Supreme Soviet of the USSR

Terrifying, is it not?

Posted by Steve Edwards on Friday, March 3, 2006 at 11:30 AM in Globalisation
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Mass migration destroys humanity?

A key distinguishing feature of humanity is its communication ability.  But what exactly is communication as opposed to manipulation?  How does communication arise?  What are the conditions for its continuation?  There have been a number of attempts at simulating the evolution of communication but till the simulation described in this article was run, none of them combined migration, climatic variation and the prisoner’s dilemma.

The simulaton is schematic but suggestive that migration can eliminate the very genetic capacity for communication and replace it with pure manipulation.

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Posted by James Bowery on Saturday, November 19, 2005 at 11:40 AM in Demographics,  Ethnicity and Ethnic Genetic Interests,  Genetics & Human Bio-Diversity,  Globalisation,  Immigration
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Pioneer Greatness:  Burt Rutan

A little good news is needed now and then. The pioneer spirit is still alive. As a person somewhat responsible for the resurgence in technology prize awards, I have a few things to say about Burt Rutan’s capture of the Ansari X-Prize by being the first to fly a man to space in a reusable craft twice within a week. He follows the great technology pioneers Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, both of whom came to prominence during similar fair contests: The Guggenheim Trophy and Orteig Prize respectively. (From these exemplars some might now see a reason the powers that be shy away from fair contests—contests where they can’t really control who wins the prizes—and it was left to an Iranian family, the Ansaris, to fully fund the X-Prize.)

A speech by Burt Rutan before the National Space Society is worth a view (requires QuickTime ). He repeatedly and angrily declares his embarrassment at the risk averse culture that has strangled the pioneer spirit since the feats of the 1960s—nearly 40 years ago. I’ve got my issues with his speech but we clearly agree that something went horribly wrong with the pioneer spirit subsequent to the 1960s. The turning inward of the human potential has resulted in the halting of human progress upward and outward with aerospace technology being bureaucratically and monotonously scaled up for jumbo jet transportation. The result is the sort of danger warned of by Charles Lindbergh in his 1939 Reader’s Digest article “Aviation, Geography, and Race”: a sea of humanity threatening our race which is, after all, a global minority. Indeed the technological exemplar of this era has been driven by the rise of finance to preeminence—the inward-turning microelectronic revolution. The unintended side-effect of this revolution you see before you now as a website, but it is small consolation for the damage to our pioneer spirit.  As we were warned by Henry Ford the great struggle of the 20th century was creative industry vs global finance.  Global finance has dominated the past 30 years or more. Perhaps men like Burt Rutan can lead us out of our malaise and realize the human potential.  If so it may be due to prize awards like the Ansari X-Prize that give men even younger than Burt Rutan a chance to make a name for themselves purely via their own grit and gifts.

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Posted by James Bowery on Wednesday, November 16, 2005 at 11:27 PM in European Nationalism,  Globalisation,  Immigration,  Science & Technology,  U.S. Politics
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Zimbabwe “Govt to cede land to Chinese” In Desperation to Grow Food

The government of Zimbabwe after starving its population by driving the Germanic farmers from their lands—farmers who had accepted Mugabe’s invitation to stay in Zimbabwe and build a more “integrated” nation—now is to “cede land to the Chinese” a “fast growing nation”, in an attempt to bolster agricultural production.

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Posted by James Bowery on Friday, November 11, 2005 at 03:18 PM in Globalisation
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The Bear’s Lair: An agenda for 2008’s Democrats

It’s increasingly likely that an unpopular war and a teetering economy will bring Republican House and Senate losses in 2006, and throw the 2008 Presidential election wide open. Free market economists, frustrated by the George W. Bush administration, should thus be thinking about ideas to pitch to the potential Democrat Presidential contenders of 2008, who will shortly start scouring the country for campaign money and voter-friendly policies.

For more, click on the link to the Great Conservatives website below:

http://www.greatconservatives.com/pages/6/index.htm

Posted by karlmagnus on Monday, September 26, 2005 at 08:50 AM in Economics & Finance,  Globalisation,  Immigration,  U.S. Politics
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Life During Wartime: Tips for Surviving and Thriving

How long were you stuck in the lemming herd? Did your eyes and lungs hurt when you coughed-up the trail dust which shortened your breath and clouded your vision? When you discovered the lies you accepted as truth did your stomach hurt? While traveling with the herd did you ever see the shepherd’s hand, or hear his commands, or like most, did you meekly follow the ass stuck in your face? Still, somehow, you broke free.

Have you also realized there is no hiding place? One can’t simply flee, or move, to some refuge or sanctuary, nor can one avoid the mental poison from television or government schools.

For example, this weekend I visited Sears, the same store I first entered 35 years ago holding my father’s hand, but this time I was an alien - and my enemies knew it. Their contempt for me was on their faces as they cut-me-off in line and cackled their barbarian speech in my face. Some tongues I couldn’t even identify nor could I determine their race: though they were all brown. Remember too, I live in Kansas, the very center of the American continent and not in New York or California. There is no place to hide!

This missive is not a racial awakening confession, it is exhortation to you - the isolate - the independent thinker -

to lead and communicate

: an exhortation to rebuild your home, family and influence those around you. I have some strategies I’d like to share and I’d be interested in hearing your ideas, but before I begin consider this quote:

I call my clothing a personal weapon because if I am tempted to do something which by law is not right, one look at myself, my hat, my coat, my tstitsis reminds me who I am. Nobody is there to see except me, and believe me that’s enough.*

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Posted by leslie on Monday, August 15, 2005 at 04:21 PM in Globalisation
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Death By Democracy

...expect the barbarians to be gracious - at first. Once they realize the power available at their fingertips - made possible by the Democratic franchise - everything our ancestors built, for our posterity, will be looted.

Salvation by Democracy is as strongly affirmed today as was devotion to relics during the Middle Ages. Accordingly each generation in the supreme act of fidelity hurls itself, as lemmings do, off the high precipice: their last words, sang in unison are Democracy, and just before smashing themselves on the jagged rocks a faint whisper rises from the brainless herd Freedom.

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Posted by leslie on Thursday, August 11, 2005 at 03:49 PM in Globalisation
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