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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bosco who wrote (8087)	2/24/1999 5:15:00 PM
From: Z268	Respond to of 9980

Bosco & al, On the subject of minimalism, here is the latest view from the Asian Wall Street Journal on how Asia can climb out of the economic mess - encourage the consumer to spend! The arguments sound plausible, not sure how the mechanics will work out....How do you encourage Asians to spend when their natural inclination is to tighten belts? Although I have heard that the Asian high rollers are returning to Las Vegas - I guess it's less boring than sitting at the office in HK, KL, Singapore or Jkt with nothing to do.... interactive.wsj.com For those of you with no access to WSJ interactive, maybe I can cut and paste for you - is this kosher? Best, Steve

To: Bosco who wrote (8087)	2/25/1999 6:24:00 PM
From: Liatris Spicata	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9980

Bosco- I'll get around to responding, but I thought I'd pass on comments from the Feb. 19 issue of India This Week (Silver Spring MD). Pandit Ravi Shankar, who was recently honored with the Bharat Raatna, spoke publicly upon the release of his 17 year-old daughter Anoushka's first released CD of sitar music. Shankar is acting as his daughter's guru with the sitar. Ravi Shakar said he does not envisage any threat to Indian classical music due to the satellite invasion "as long as young people are not anti-classical and preserve our tradition". [is there something tautological there??] "There is nothing wrong about the new MTV generation preferring rap and pop music as long as they are not anti-classical in their outlook. ... There is nothing good or bad about music as long as we preserve our tradition." said Shankar. The Maestro, who is nearing 80, said there is no dearth of talent among the young generation but that they were not finding proper gurus. Shankar regretted that "now, thanks to CDs and the Internet, you don't need a guru. Youth, sex appeal and appearance provide a good market." As a result, performances were neat but lacked depth, he said. "Today things are different from what it used to be when I took talim from my Guru, 'Baba' Allauddin Khan. We would concentrate on only one thing- practice, learn, dream and sleep music". But today young people are under a lot of pressure to work besides various diversions. "When I see the amount of work Anoushka has to do in school, it really breaks my heart. The guru in me wants her to practice but the father in me realises the pressure she is under." ***************************************************************** "the US history is littered with rubber barrons" - or is that robber barrons?- oh well Burton Folsom wrote a book entitled "The Myth of the Robber Barons". Folsom noted there were two kinds of business developers in 19th and early 20th century America (as it really changed?). The first were "political entrepreneurs" who were in fact comparable to medieval ribber burrons, for they sought and obtained wealth through the coercive power of the state, which is to say that they were subsidized by government and were sometimes granted monopoly status by government. Invariably, their products or services were inferior to and/or more expensive than goods and services provided by "market entrepreneurs. Folsom claimed that the market entrepreneurs have been repeatedly ignored by historians, when they have not been lumped in with their politically connected counterparts. As the young Cornelius Vanderbuilt complained after barely surviving his first year competing against the government subsidized steamship company of Robert Fulton and Edward Collins, "It is utterly impossible for a private individual to stand in competition with a line drawing nearly one million dollars per annum from the national treasury ..." By the way, the Collins company was much more accident prone than was Vanderbuilt's- to the tune of about 500 passengers lives by 1856. Moreover, Collins' company catered to the well-heeled, with elegant saloons and ladies' drawing rooms, while Vanderbuilt targeted more the hoi polloi. Vanderbuilt even had the "People's Line"- Sir Freddie, are you there- on the Hudson river that drove the fare from New York to Albany from $3.00 to 10 cents. Folsom's chapter on JD Rockefeller is a masterpiece, IMO. The book was re-published by republished by Young America's Foundation, 110 Elden St. Herndon VA 22070. Hardback edition ISBN 0-9630203-0-7 costs $19.95 US while the SB edition ISBN 0-9630203-1-5 goes for $6.95. Go for the hardback. Larry P.S. I don't think unionism had much to do with how SK and Taiwan structured their respective relationships between business and government, although I'm not particularly knowledgeable with the history. But neither country had strong unions during their early stages of industrialization. SK had corrupt politicians who did very well for themselves. Taiwan, for all its faults under Chaing-Kai Chek and his son, didn't go for that. P.P.S. Whose soul would you rather have leave a legacy to the future: Bill Gates, or Joel Klein?