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To: carranza2 who wrote (18974)5/14/2002 6:36:28 PM
From: Raymond Duray  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 74559
 
carranza2,

Thanks for your astute commentary on the nature of globalization. I find that your conjecture "can't be a good thing" is a masterful understatement. Though there is something to be said for chaining children to sewing machines in Pakistan so they won't be tempted to take up the Kalishnikov.

Here's a useful guide to how the globalizers intend to do bidness in future. Sneaky, very sneaky:

gregpalast.com

The only thing I know for sure is that the propagandistically misnamed "free traders" are way more interested in greed than in trade.

I've heard that their new flagship stores in New York and London are going to be named "Duplicity 'R Us".
-R.



To: carranza2 who wrote (18974)5/14/2002 8:33:34 PM
From: Maurice Winn  Respond to of 74559
 
Carranza2, life is a merry melange. There isn't really a "them" and "us" other than in some narrow senses. Americans think they are a "us" until Bill Clinton takes over then they start foaming at the mouth and he doesn't seem to be "us" although he won two elections easily. Now that GeorgeW is ascendant, "us" is quite different again.

What and who is "us"? That's one part of the problem

The other is where does the individual start and stop as a mere cog in the state wheel? The USSR and Mao tried to make the individual nothing but a servant of the state. That approach is part of life in the USA and NZ - we are increasingly subsumed by a government which requires little of us but to obey orders.

Everywhere, those dichotomies are played out with people moving from one country to another to see whether the grass really is greener in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave [where everything is prohibited unless specifically authorized and the Brave usually look the other way rather than get involved].

There are no clear dividing lines so <don't let the poor ones in on the deal (they can't afford it anyway) because they'll figure out how to make stuff even cheaper and gain competitive advantage--can't let that happen.
> that's not strictly correct.

Certainly soldering secrets were wrongly transferred [inadvertently] to China by Loral. I think the main thing wrong with the soldering help was that Bernie Schwartz was a big donor to the Democratic Party and it was payback time for Senator Lott of Laughs. But that's not an attempt to keep technology out of the hands of the poor.

QUALCOMM for example, and me as a shareholder, has been transferring technology and knowledge and issuing licenses to any poor people who want to take part [and have the ability]. India and China are on the way to CDMA nirvana. There is no intention of keeping them from getting hold of CDMA technology and selling heaps of it.

Our hope is that China, with 7% royalties for exports and 2% for own-use, will sell billions of devices, defeating the Axis of GSM. Korea is well underway. Indians are starting to get the idea that there's more to life than Marxism, poverty and independence from Britain. They will also buy CDMA. They can buy CDMA by letting QUALCOMM provide capital for education and production and using their newly acquired skills and efforts to buy CDMA.

We want the poor to get in on the act. They can do a better job cheaper than the layabouts in the wealthy world who won't work for less than a King's ransom. We want them to apply their brains and efforts to building the wireless world. They want to do that because they understand the benefits to them.

Poor countries are poor because of their decisions about how to run their lives. They are NOT poor because some countries have figured out how to make things better and have done it through brains, effort and civilization [meaning protection of private property and rule of law rather than rule of the toughest ape who can put a silly gold-braided hat on himself in mimicry of the British].

Wealth [I know you know this] is not something which exists in a certain quantity. There is no limit to wealth. There is no pie to cut up and some miss out. Anyone can create wealth if they have the ability and will. Where they live in barbaric places like Zimbabwe, they have very few opportunities to create wealth and can create only small amounts. Their greatest wealth-creating activity is to escape [which millions do as refugees] or take over from the ignorant rulers [unfortunately, most takeovers are not with the intention of changing the rules, but rather getting the fruits of power].

The wealth of the USA is not at the cost of people in the barbaric [more barbaric I should say] countries. The USA is far from Nirvana, but it's better than most. The average slave descendant produces hundreds of times the value that the descendants of the people who sold them into servitude are producing. That's because they live in a country which is civilized and wealth can be created.

The poor countries are full of people who weren't taken out as slaves. They can be as rich as they want to be. Nigerian cyberspace scams, theft, murder, superstitions and the like are not the road to riches, even with their oil.

I won't invest in a place like Nigeria or Mao's China. But I'm happy to invest in Hu Jintao's and Zhu Rongji's China. I'd be happy to colonize Nigeria and introduce civilisation and then invest in it [it's a moral obligation really].

Mqurice