Book Description
The enemies of globalization--whether they denounce the exploitation of poor countries by rich ones or the imposition of Western values on traditional cultures--see the new world economy as forcing a system on people who do not want it. But the truth of the matter, writes Daniel Cohen in this provocative account, may be the reverse. Globalization, thanks to the speed of twenty-first-century communications, shows people a world of material prosperity that they do want--a vivid world of promises that have yet to be fulfilled. For the most impoverished developing nations, globalization remains only an elusive image, a fleeting mirage. Never before, Cohen says, have the means of communication--the media--created such a global consciousness, and never have economic forces lagged so far behind expectations.
Today's globalization, Cohen argues, is the third act in a history that began with the Spanish Conquistadors in the sixteenth century and continued with Great Britain's nineteenth-century empire of free trade. In the nineteenth century, as in the twenty-first, a revolution in transportation and communication did not promote widespread wealth but favored polarization. India, a part of the British empire, was just as poor in 1913 as it was in 1820. Will today's information economy do better in disseminating wealth than the telegraph did two centuries ago? Presumably yes, if one gauges the outcome from China's perspective; surely not, if Africa's experience is a guide. At any rate, poor countries require much effort and investment to become players in the global game. The view that technologies and world trade bring wealth by themselves is no more true today than it was two centuries ago.
We should not, Cohen writes, consider globalization as an accomplished fact. It is because of what has yet to happen--the unfulfilled promises of prosperity--that globalization has so many enemies in the contemporary world. For the poorest countries of the world, the problem is not so much that they are exploited by globalization as that they are forgotten and excluded.
Customer Reviews:
Globalization has its enemies - but the enemies are neither obvious nor a united front.......2006-09-04
I have liked Daniel Cohen's work since 1996 when I first read his paper "Tests of the `convergence hypothesis': some further results" published in the Journal of Economic Growth (September). So, I came to the current book with a positive preconception - and I am glad to say I was not disappointed.
The provocative title of the book is misleading to the extent it conveys a black and white message: globalization on one side; its enemies on the other. Not so. The central point is an argument against the false notion that the wealth and income disparities between the West and the Third World resulted from either religious differences or exploiter-exploited relationships between the two regions. The book points out that what some have interpreted as the result of evildoing on the part of the West are simply impacts of unintended consequences of technology. The book uses an example from Algeria where a technology like DDT intended for mosquito eradication and therefore malaria and typhoid elimination had the indirect effect of allowing a population growth which needed more food, which needed more land and other resources to grow the food, and in the end resulted in inequalities and reduced happiness. The example makes clear that the consequences of globalization "transcend the simple categories of Good and Evil" (pp. 2-3).
Globalization is not a monolithic and one-time phenomenon; instead it is a sequential and systematic Westernization of the globe that began with the "discovery" of America in the 15th century, was expanded by the English merchants in the 18th century, and has picked up pace to-date. During its early phases globalization brought to non-Western regions both cures (e.g., medicine) and infections (e.g. smallpox), but it is not so clear that all that was intentional. What is clear is that globalization dashed expectations in that many ended up disappointed that after voluntarily abandoning their cultures for Western civilization, they soon discovered, for example, that "far from delivering the free entry and transparency dreamed of by economists, the socalled information society creates its own barriers, replacing those that technology breaks down. [Thus], the enemies of globalization are arrayed in two opposed camps. One camp ... is that of the Mullahs who denounce the Westernization of the world. The other camp is that of [those] who fight the exploitation of workers by capital." (p. 5). However, the two arrays are simplifications because "to understand the current act of globalization within the confines of religion or exploitation is to miss globalization's singularity" (p. 6). The [] added.
Following Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, among others, Chapter 1 debunks explanations of world disparities in terms of pre-destinies such as genetics and geographies. I detect some hedging here, but the book finally settles on the importance of "initial conditions". For example, countries with large amounts of land can accommodate many people who invent more products and services, which makes endogenous growth both possible and sustainable.
Chapter 2 and 3 sketch the phases of globalization and conclude that globalization has become increasingly "immobile". It is no longer just a function of the international division of labor. The international division of labor can lead to unequal terms of trade in which, technically speaking, the Northern working class exploits the Southern class but blame ends up on the feet of international capital. The current globalization act has additional aspects like global equality of tastes and preferences along with disappearing distance and corresponding costs. Hence, winners in this phase are those at or closest to the center of the economic activity in terms of both production and consumption.
How did the observed differences arise? The answer is not clear here. It is clear, however, that it is not because of the "clash of civilizations". The clash of civilization is a myth based on the fact that there has always been active cross-fertilization and learning among world cultures. Civilizations that crashed are those that closed themselves off from others and withdrew into self-imposed isolation in either proud contentment or loathing of foreigners. China is one good example that appears now to have learned its lesson. Another example is the "indigenous growth" model that African and Latin American countries adopted upon their independence. The new republics invested heavily in "white elephants" for which the rate of returns remain negative. I like the distinction Cohen makes between "indigenous growth" and "endogenous growth". The latter is driven by economic "levers" such as human capital, physical capital, "global efficiency", and international trade. The emphasis is appropriate because, in praising the strengths of the Japanese model many seem to ignore that endogenous aspects have dominated Japan's indigenous growth.
What are the sources of the enmity toward globalization? There are many and Chapters 6 and 7 outline two. One source is that some (mostly Eroupean countries) equate globalization with empire building - American empire (Chapter 6). In some way their perspective has basis in history; after all Portugal, Spain, and England have been there and done all that. Their lesson was that empires are doomed and their longevity finite. A second and final source of enmity toward is that the benefits of globalization are tilted towards the North, while the South is under pressure from AIDS and Debt (Chapter 7). These two sources illustrate that " the problem of globalization up to now is it has altered people's expectations more than it has increased their ability to act" (p. 166). Without the ability to meet expectations, " for the majority of the poor inhabitants of our planet, globalization remains an inaccessible idea" (p. 166), and "the world will never be `just' as long as people do not have the conviction that they all contribute to discovering and molding a shared destiny" (` p169). Great job!
H. V. Amavilah, Author
Modeling Income Determinants in Embedded Economies : Cross-section Applications to US Native American Economies
ISBN: 1600210465
Amazon.com
Virginia Postrel smashes conventional political boundaries in this libertarian manifesto. World-views should be defined not by how they view the present, she says, but the future. Do they aim to control it, as many conservative reactionaries and liberal planners want to do? Or do they embrace it, even though they can't know what lies ahead? Postrel (editor of Reason magazine) firmly places herself in this latter category--the dynamists, she calls her happy tribe--and urges the rest of us to sign up. The future of economic prosperity, technological progress, and cultural innovation depends upon embracing principles of choice and competition. The downside of this philosophy, Postrel readily notes, is that it doesn't allow us to manage tomorrow by acting today. And that's exactly the point: we shouldn't want to. A future constructed by an infinite number of individual decisions, made privately, is one she believes we should encourage. The Future and Its Enemies is at once intellectually sweeping and reader-friendly; it has the potential to join a pantheon of books about freedom that includes works by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. --John J. Miller
Book Description
Today we have greater wealth, health, opportunity, and choice than at any time in history. Yet a chorus of intellectuals and politicians laments our current condition -- as slaves to technology, coarsened by popular culture, and insecure in the face of economic change. The future, they tell us, is dangerously out of control, and unless we precisely govern the forces of change, we risk disaster.
In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel explodes the myths behind these claims. Using examples that range from medicine to fashion, she explores how progress truly occurs and demonstrates that human betterment depends not on conformity to one central vision but on creativity and decentralized, open-ended trial and error. She argues that these two opposing world-views -- "stasis" vs. "dynamism" -- are replacing "left" and "right" to define our cultural and political debate as we enter the next century.
In this bold exploration of how civilizations learn, Postrel heralds a fundamental shift in the way we view politics, culture, technology, and society as we face an unknown -- and invigorating -- future.
Customer Reviews:
Benevolence of free actors can't be taken for granted.......2007-02-11
Postrel's future strikes me as naive and idealistic. Unleashing the creative animus of billions of free actors? OK, but history teaches over and over that humans are not predisposed to always act charitably to each other. Laws, customs, and regulations are there to protect your rights and property from being diminished by malice or careless neglect on the part of others. Current events serve as stark reminders of how civil order rests on a flimsy foundation....the looting of Baghdad immediately upon the collapse of authority, and the inability to restore public safety ever since. The inability of law enforcement to gain the upper hand over international narco-gangs and terrorist groups. The rapid exploitation of internet anonymity by pornographers, scam artists and identity theives. The insidious pollution of our life support systems with hundreds of thousands of industrial chemicals. The impending collapse of ocean fisheries. The culprits in all these cases are clever people acting on their creative urges, adapting quickly to new technology, and embracing a future brimming with new possibilities. That isn't to say that a larger body of change agents will act benevolently or benignly in their impacts. The problem is, it's taking fewer rotten apples to spoil the barrel. As Bill Joy has pointed out, our vulnerabilities are growing exponentially. While I am a fan of progress, and a willing participant, if we don't come to a concensus about which aspects of our way of life must be safeguarded and handed off intact to posterity, then at the hands of a billion busy hands pursuing lesser purposes, the odds are overwhelming that we will undermine the future. You can't equate progress simply with loosening the reigns on individual initiative, even in a world of saints, because too many things can go wrong unintentionally.
But I applaud the author for asking people to think about the future, and how best to make it a good one.
Very dry and boring.......2007-01-12
If you need something to put you to sleep read a couple of pages just before bed time.
Deserves to be declared a Classic.......2006-12-16
This book is brilliant. I also believe it is a very important book that needs to be read by many thinking people. It highlights the importance of creativity, diversity, flexibility and the value of choice to our lives, our standards of living and progress in all of its forms.
It describes in colourful details, several important concepts - we cannot know enough about the future to predict it accurately, to do detailed plans for it, to control it. We cannot know precisely what products will sell or what book or movie will prove popular. The world is far too complex. Billions of individuals are making billions of decisions all of the time and this complexity cannot even be analyzed sufficiently well, let alone controlled and guided.
This book describes and gives interesting and convincing examples of how change and creativity run together. Dynamism is put forward as social/cultural/economic evolution. The beauty and power of Darwinian evolution is closely paralleled in the free market and in the idea and application of thought and effort into a very diverse range of fields: science, the arts (the creation of new art works and new art forms), engineering, marketing, medicine and so on.
It does not state a need to throw out all rules, standards and structures are unreasonable. One of the central ideas the book describes is where a simple set of rules can give rise to great diversity and complexity. A simple set of rules (as opposed to complete chaos) allows business or technological innovation to get a start while still allowing it maximum freedom to grow and evolve.
It describes how apparent chaos can give rise to more expansive forms of order, to "emergent solutions" to everyday problems.
I have to disagree with a previous reviewer. He states that the book is composed of individual essays that are "loosely connected". On the contrary, I would say they tie together very well. Collectively they describe how Dynamism can be applied to different aspects of our social, economic and political lives.
This book gives some much needed criticism of assumptions and philosophical/political stances that are very harmful to progress and society overall:
It's an effective counter to that ridiculous "Precautionary Principle".
It's an effective counter to the institutionalization of education, scientific research - basically all the important things.
It's an effective counter to that insidious desire by many to control other people - control what they think, do or say. As an adjunct to that, it's an effective counter to the idea that centralized control produces better outcomes than an uncontrolled, diverse and individualistic approach.
I highly recommend this book. Get it along with `Market for Liberty' and `Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal'.
Sharp insight from Virginia Postrel.......2006-05-11
I consider myself an optimist and insightful person, but somehow managed to miss many of Postrel's insights. She gives me even more hope that the future is going to be more wonderful than I previously thought. She does keep that hope in check, though, by talking about the enemies of the future- primarily protectionists and those that see free trade as a threat, instead of the blessing that it is.
She thoroughly destroys the notion that 'there is nothing new under that sun'. While the universe, therefore our earth, is necessarily finite, we misunderstand this finiteness because we misunderstand the different combinations things can be arranged in. For example, a deck of cards has only 52 cards, but the number of combinations you can put the cards into is 52x51x50x49x...x3x2x1, which is a number larger than the number of particles in the universe! So whenever you shuffle a deck of cards, you can rest assured, that that is probably the one and only time that arrangement of cards will ever be in existence... ever.
People are so inventive and creative and always looking for new things. Obviously, there will always be new things. Every time someone declares that we are nearing the end of history, science, technology, etc. it's safe to say they have no idea what they are talking about. We need to let people be as creative and as inventive as they can. It will only make our lives better, on the whole. There will always be setbacks, but as long as people can think, we will always find a way to make out of those setbacks.
The book is a stunning, intelligent look at modern life. I liked it so much, I bought The Substance of Style, which is, yet, another insightful look at modern life.
Why care about the future?.......2005-11-28
Postrel forces you to think explicitly about the future. I have 10 children. Thus I have more invested in the future than most people. The future my children and grandchildren inherit and create be mostly shaped by people with dynamist views. After all, it is the dynamists who created civilization. To be sure, history is full of examples where the forces of stasis won over the dynamists, sometimes for centuries. However, I think the future is with the dynamists. I'm betting this book will be considered a seminal classic 100 years from now.
Customer Reviews:
Living the life he sings about in his song........2004-12-31
The book rates 5 stars for its writing. The premise is interesting and forms a decent basis for analyz(s)ing a human societal condition but he moans too loudly about what its effects are and mis-predicts what's been happening.
In fact there are more of us, both in number and as a proportion of humankind who are "usefully unemployed". The "professional enemies" of this right/art are increasingly ridiculed/ignored despite their mostly effective power grab - the power they grab finally corrupts them so near absolutely that they become impotent therefrom and the doctor who gets his portfolio value higher and his golf handicap lower is made poorer if not thereby then therewith.
More people let their awareness of "rat race" "cognitive overload" and other nomenclatural descriptions of our riches affect their activities and we are increasingly info-source as well as info-sinks. There isn't really less reading going on but it's clear that there's more writing being done, and that's leading to an understanding that it's the act of expression that matters whether one finds audience for such as this or not.
I'm as enriching as I am enriched from building musical instruments and making music with them even though only a handful get used by others and almost nobody hears what I play. The book overlooks this phenomenon's burgeoning.
Love.
Close, but no Castro!.......2002-12-05
Illich makes what would otherwise be dry reading into an emotional and thought-provoking journey. He has great perception to see interactions in society. Every moment I spent reading it was worthwhile. Just as much fun was deconstructing his arguments to see how he reached the conclusions and deciding whether I agree. I am eager to read "Tools for Conviviality."
Illich proposes that sometime in the last 50 years society passed through a threshold where "modernized subsistence" was achieved and all our modern real needs were met. At this point we reached the maximum, and coincidently the ideal level, of individual satisfaction through a balance of autonomous action and consumption of mass-produced commodities (goods and services primarily in medical, transportation and educational areas). But then society passed through this threshold and, as a result individuals have been experiencing lower and lower overall satisfaction with life with our ever increasing use of mass-produced commodities.
Illich argues that society would have stopped at the threshold value had there not been created at that moment the distorting force of the Dominant Professions. Dominant Professions that impel society to produce a surfeit of mass-produced commodities.
Dominant Professions are a professional class with the power to impute the need for unneeded commodities upon the citizenry. By using the language of the Professional, they trick us laymen to go beyond our real needs by creating in us needs that we would not otherwise have - imputed needs. They do this for the sake of sustaining and furthering their authority and profession and in the service of the people who control the tools of mass production. The Dominant Professionals not only control the distribution and supply of the approved commodity that satisfies our imputed need, they also make it illegal or impossible to satisfy our need using a non-approved commodity. The Professional's commodities are of course mass-produced. Thus, society has passed the threshold because of the Dominant Professions. To get back to that threshold value we need to dismantle the authority of the professional class.
Those are the arguments. The fun part is decomposing the arguments. Stop reading now if you want to figure it out for yourself without being biased by my analysis.
First, Illich imagines us a citizenry of such simpletons we can't determine how much we need to sustain ourselves in this late industrial society. By calling every need an "imputed need" if it is beyond "modernized subsistence", Illich can blame the Dominate Professionals for causing society to progress past where it would otherwise have stopped, fully satisfied. I disagree. It is the ever expanding desires of individuals that keep us wanting more long after we knowingly achieved subsistence. We are never satisfied enough to stop wanting more. These are not imputed needs from an external Professional class that we need to defend ourselves against, this is our own natural behavior which we chose not to rein in.
Illich also tells us that we know the maximum benefit to life that industry can ever provide. Fortunately, this is not true. For example, if average longevity hasn't changed during the past 50 years it doesn't follow that industry has been ineffective. This assumes a constant population base whereas the size of society is increasing and more people are living to about the same age. And there is ample evidence that the mass-produced commodities are the cause for improvement in life. Examples Illich sites in the book as examples of autonomous actions replaced by commodites that induce "modernized poverty" include; peasants living in homes they built from and upon the refuse of others moved to pre-fabricated houses, indoor light from fires and candles replaced with electricity, infant mortality reduced by the presence of trained physicians. Furthermore, individual human longevity is not limited by a theoretical physical law we know of in the same way the speed of light is. Thus, because the record has not been broken in the past 50 years it does not follow that it cannot be broken during the next 50 years. If we followed this logic long-jump competitions were no longer necessary after the 1968 Olympics.
Illich proposes that we are faced with a new choice - "modernized subsistence" - resulting from the invention of modern industrial capabilities. However, each age - in it's own time "modern" - stone, bronze, iron or last week in the post industrial age, the commodities that determined the maximum attainable life and the minimum amount of resources needed to stay alive, e.g. the subsistence level, were dependent on what was available. Because installation of a society-wide commodity will always impede the liberty of an individual to use another technology or no technology at all - whether it is the rules of the road, language, or inoculations, there is no non-zero level of commodity use required that will simultaneously preserve for every individual the liberty to act and the same objective measure of "modernized subsistence". Simply said - your actions count towards yourself and the whole.
Illich's asserts we know what "modernized subsistence" looks like from empirical observation. In fact, Illich gives his opinion of a current and real country that has at its disposal the appropriate intensity of production to approximate "modernized subsistence." Subsistence is a minimum level to support life. "Modernized Subsistence" supports "Convivial Austerity." What Illich proposes is his ideal society: his idea of the ideal life for the individual that alienates the liberties he cherishes least and mandates the commodities he values more.
Illich shows our beautiful tendency to romanticize the past; when it seemed that the world reached its apex coincidently with our arrival on the planet. Language was real, technology was benign, and people were pure until that moment when a kernel -born only in our consciousness - metastasized and corrupted the balance of powers that would have otherwise been. Reality is that language is always evolving, applied technology is never benign and people run the gamut from altruistic to evil. And this has always been the case. Illich's arguments and desires for a better world are wonderful food-for-thought. They also are unfortunately an impractical model for society.
Average customer rating:
- A very well documented book...
- I hope that there is a 3.1 version
- Rehashed newspaper articles
- Excellent look behind the scenes of the case, MS & the DOJ
- Balanced but ultimately misses the point
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World War 3.0 : Microsoft and Its Enemies
Ken Auletta
Manufacturer: Random House
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Backstory: Inside the Business of News
ASIN: 0375503668
Release Date: 2001-01-09 |
Book Description
The Internet Revolution, like all great industrial changes, has made the world's elephantine media companies tremble that their competitors-whether small and nimble mice or fellow elephants-will get to new terrain first and seize its commanding heights. In a climate in which fear and insecurity are considered healthy emotions, corporate violence becomes commonplace. In the blink of an eye-or the time it has taken slogans such as "The Internet changes everything" to go from hyperbole to banality-"creative destruction" has wracked the global economy on an epic scale.
No one has been more powerful or felt more fear or reacted more violently than Bill Gates and Microsoft. Afraid that any number of competitors might outflank them-whether Netscape or Sony or AOL Time Warner or Sun or AT&T or Linux-based companies that champion the open-source movement or some college student hacking in his dorm room-Microsoft has waged holy war on all foes, leveraging its imposing strengths.
In
World War 3.0, Ken Auletta chronicles this fierce conflict from the vantage of its most important theater of operations: the devastating second front opened up against Bill Gates's empire by the United States government. The book's narrative spine is United States v. Microsoft, the government's massive civil suit against Microsoft for allegedly stifling competition and innovation on a broad scale. With his superb writerly gifts and extraordinary access to all the principal parties, Ken Auletta crafts this landmark confrontation into a tight, character- and incident-filled courtroom drama featuring the best legal minds of our time, including David Boies and Judge Richard Posner. And with the wisdom gleaned from covering the converging media, software, and communications industries for The New Yorker for the better part of a decade, Auletta uses this pivotal battle to shape a magisterial reckoning with the larger war and the agendas, personalities, and prospects of its many combatants.
Customer Reviews:
A very well documented book..........2005-10-31
...and you don't really have to be a geek to read this one. As a matter of fact, this book is also a very entertaining one, even if you're not a programmer or a computer scientist.
Mr Auletta enjoyed an almost total access to court documents, and he even managed to get Judge Jackson to agree to be interviewed by him before he rendered his judgement, and later on his decision on what became the most important legal dispute of the last century. He raises some very important questions, a few of them being crucial, like: How do you distinguish between business hardball and illegal coercive methods? Is Microsoft a monopoly? If so, the law treats the company differently. But the most crucial of all questions is: Was there consumer harm? I guess these are the questions that leave much room for interpretation and controversy. It would appear that Microsoft did not milk customers by charging steep prices, although one might argue that this was because they sacrificed price to create an applications barrier to entry that would perpetuate their monopoly.
The concepts of Sherman and Clayton acts have not changed, but what has changed over the years is that the courts insist more on evidence of consumer harm and are inclined to allow the marketplace to correct imbalances rather than the government. And by now, at the end of 2005 it would appear that the marketplace has rendered its judgement. Among many other things, the Microsoft stock has moved sideways for the last four, five years.
All in all, "World War 3.0" is a very good account of this extraordinary trial, written in plain english, perfectly integrating the legal and the business drama at the core issues of this case. Besides, Mr Auletta offers memorable portraits of the main protagonists, ranging from Mr Gates and some of his lawyers to Judge Jackson, Mr Boies and Mr Klein.
I liked the part where Mr Gates is portrayed as being more a businessman (although a brilliant one) rather than a seer, since Microsoft has always been famous for popularizing the inventions of others rather than innovating. Many economists and businessmen think Microsoft is a great marketing company, but not a great technology one. After all, Mr Gates himself has many a time acknowledged that Microsoft's great successes - DOS, the graphical user interface, Windows - have all been clones. Among many business, technology and legal issues or concepts analyzed in this book, one of the parts I liked the most is when the author likens Mr Gates to Bing Crosby, who throughout his carreer borrowed a tune here and a tune there, got his marketing machine running, thus turning those tunes to instant hits. Few other critics could have put it better!
I hope that there is a 3.1 version.......2004-09-09
Having just read the book this summer (2004), much of the content that predicts the future points to current day reality. This only goes to show that both the visions of the future are never what is hoped for, and the more things change, the more they stay the same.
This book does seem somewhat rushed in the final 1/3, and it ends more on a whimper than a bang. This is so much a 'Round 1' reporting, with obvious need for either a follow-up account of what has transpired since then, or at least some explination as to what happened. Ah to be focused on mean old Bill rather than dictators and terrorists on the other side of the planet. It seems as if 9/11 tore this case from the front-pages of the world's newspapers, banishing it to irrevelance in light of daily body-counts. We need an upgrade to this story - Mr. Auletta, please update us!
I want to know more. I wish there was a version 3.1.
Rehashed newspaper articles.......2002-11-05
No new revelations here. This story has been told in earlier books, and with more ground breaking impact. This is a case of the publisher hoping to capitalize on a big business story, but too late !! See earlier books on the Microsoft antitrust case, such as The Microsoft File.
Excellent look behind the scenes of the case, MS & the DOJ.......2002-06-11
There are no press releases in this book, no spin by the local media and no facades maintained for the public. Ken Auletta exposes this case for what it is, even if he gets some of the details wrong in the process. There are no heroes and no villains, though there is a distinct slant against Microsoft and its top brass (Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer). Even so, Auletta doesn't paint a rosy picture of the other parties involved either. Overall, I would have to say it's about as impartial as one could be.
As I read this book, I found myself flip-flopping back and forth between who I thought was right and who was wrong. In the end it was apparent to me that Microsoft was most likely guilty of some unfair business practices, namely denying computer manufacturers (OEMs) the right to put competitive software on computers with Windows software. But the case mutated away from that point to whether or not Microsoft has the right to add functionality to its operating system. Where this whole saga will end (if ever) is anyone's guess.
All in all, this is a good book to get an overview of the case and the people involved.
Balanced but ultimately misses the point.......2001-06-03
Ken Auletta is an excellent reporter, and here was able to obtain amazing access to the district court judge in the Microsoft case. Indeed, Judge Jackson gave long interviews with Mr. Auletta based on the judge's personal notes, and later was blasted by all of the Appeals Court judges for allowing this kind of access.
Mr. Auletta is generally very fair in recounting the events of the Microsoft trial, but he also is not a programmer and not a lawyer and not a business strategist and it shows. His grasp of some of the fundamental legal issues at stake is rather poor, and his failure to predict the reasoning of the eminently predictable appeals court (which had already ruled in favor of Microsoft) is a big problem with this book.
Part of the problem is that Mr. Auletta reported only on what he saw, and Microsoft to a large extent wasn't bothering to convince the district court judge of their case (they already felt they'd lose despite Judge Jackson's protests that he was impartial). Microsoft instead focused on setting up the right arguments to later win at the appellate level, which it now looks like they will do.
Mr. Auletta, for all his excellent reporting, ultimately misses Microsoft's deeper game plan, despite noting that the reason Microsoft hired the lawyers that it did was that they previously had one a large reversal at the appellate level for Kodak. He should have looked a bit further into the story, and paid less attention to the (albeit amusing) theatrics of the district court.
Average customer rating:
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The Open Economy and its Enemies: Public Attitudes in East Asia and Eastern Europe
Jane Duckett , and
William L. Miller
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0521864062
Release Date: 2007-01-01 |
Book Description
There is a vigorous debate about the merits of globalisation for developing countries. Based on numerous focus-group discussions and over 10,000 interviews, this book studies economic and cultural openness from the perspective of the public in four developing or ‘transitional’ countries: Vietnam, (South) Korea, the Czech Republic and Ukraine (both before and after the Orange Revolution). It finds many supporters of opening up, but also many who are discontented with its downsides and who expect states to tackle the exploitation and unfairness that accompany it. Among the most fervent enemies of openness there is support not just for peaceful public protest to tackle the problems it brings, but for violence or sabotage. The methodology provides a unique opportunity for the public in developing countries to ‘speak with their own voices’ about markets and openness – and highlights the subtlety, ambiguity, tensions, conflicts and emotion that statistics alone fail to capture.
Average customer rating:
- fascinating look at "anti-economics"
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Economics and Its Enemies
William Oliver Coleman
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1403941483
Release Date: 2004-12-23 |
Book Description
Anti-economics is described as the opposition to the main stream of economic thought that has existed from the eighteenth-century to the present day. This book tells the story of anti-economics in relations to Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Walras, Keynes and Hicks as well as current economic thinkers. William Coleman examines how anti-economics developed from the Enlightenment to the present day and analyzes its various guises.
Customer Reviews:
fascinating look at "anti-economics".......2005-08-31
This book is a very fascinating look at what the author, William Coleman, calls "anti-economics". In Coleman's view mainstream economics has constantly been shadowed by a loose group of critics and nay-sayers who object to all that mainstream economics has come to represent.
As Coleman demonstrates the objections to economics are legion. On the Right of the political spectrum, mainstream economics is despised for its endorsement of the pursuit of individual self-interest which appears to be a threat to the existing social order. On the Left, economists are despised precisely because they are seen as the apologists for the existing social order. And this is only the beginning. Others object to economists views of man as a utility maximizer, man as a rational animal or economists apparent approval of profits over people...ect, ect.
Coleman's book is best read as a kind of catalouge and perhaps summary analysis of the ideas of opponents of mainstream economics. The range of views he presents and the depth of his research alone is impressive. The bibliography of works Coleman provides in and of itself is an invaluable resource to anyone interested in the history of economic ideas or intellectual history in general.
However, as a defense of mainstream economics it is much less impressive. First, it is never clear exactly what Coleman means by "economics" or in his words "the grand tradition". In some cases he appears to be defending the idea of a free market capitalism, in other cases he appears to be defending the idea of economic man and sometimes Coleman's concerns seem to be focused more on defending Enlightenment ideas of human nature than economics per se. By failing to be more precise in exactly what he is in fact defending Coleman is able to lump a wide body of thought into the category of "anti-economics" but sometimes he is patently unfair in his apprasials. Just because someone had objections to economics does not mean they were "anti-economists". Some were working to revise or change the course of economics as a discipline rather than destroy it outright.
Also, Coleman tends to dismiss all objections to idea of economic man and other ideas associated with mainstream economics even when those objections seem to have some validity. While generally my personal sympathies are with free market capitalism and with mainstream economics, I do not think one can pretend that these two venerable institutions are beyond criticism or lack areas for improvement. Some of the criticisms to economics Coleman includes and refutes seem not entirely invalid to me. For example, the idea of a society of people rationally pursuing their own self-interests is I think preferable in principle, but one could posit situations in which this prinicple might be extended too far to the detriment of society at large.
Whatever shortcomings Coleman's work might have it is still a highly enjoyable, fascinating and informative read. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a serious (or even casual) student of economic thought and the history of ideas.
Average customer rating:
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The Free Market and Its Enemy
Manufacturer: Foundation for Economic Education
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000EB87EG |
Product Description
Treatise on how "the little Napoleons" who invade ranks of government are enemies of the free market.
Average customer rating:
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The Free Market and its enemy
Leonard Edward Read
Manufacturer: Foundation for Economic Education
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
Economic Policy & Development
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Popular Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: B0007DE8K8 |
Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from International Review of Economics and Finance, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Description:
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