totalitarianism today

Please keep the gift.

How pitiful. Radley brought this article on "push presents", or gifts given to mothers by fathers for birthing a baby, to my attention. All I can think to say is that if you need a piece of jewelry to make the delivery of a child more meaningful for you, then you have missed a few points along the way.

Better biology?

According to a report from the BBC, Chinese experts have used in vitro fertilization to implant a foetus created using three parents-- two females and a male-- into a Chinese woman.

Duncan Kennedy on import substitution industrialization.

Duncan Kennedy writes about the explosive combination of economic and military goals in the post-Saddam Iraq. In this article for The Boston Review, Kennedy discusses a little-known development paradigm used from the 1950's to the 1970's called "import substitution industrialization". In Kennedy's words:

"ISI was an intricate complex of policies based on the notion that development required active and pervasive state involvement in the economy. In the form promoted by the United States, ISI was as hostile to free-market economics as to Communism. The overarching idea of the Washington Consensus was to wipe out every aspect of ISI: the Washington Consensus is both that free markets are good and that ISI was bad. Developing countries were to develop through integration into the world commodity and capital markets, with policies of deregulated private enterprise, foreign investment, and open economic borders.

The anti-ISI prescriptions of the Consensus include the following: removing tariff barriers to imports and foreign exchange controls; cutting off subsidized credit to private enterprises and subsidies to government-owned enterprises; privatizing all but basic government services; downsizing the remaining government ministries; instituting “user fees” for basic government services such as health, utilities (where not privatized), and education; eliminating food subsidies; removing price caps and other forms of government regulation of the private sector; enforcing law through courts (rather than through government administrative agencies); and establishing a legal regime favorable to foreign investment by removing restrictions on foreign ownership and on the repatriation of profits.

In the 1980s and ’90s the Consensus was implemented through “structural adjustment” and “conditionalities”; the IMF and World Bank would require ISI countries facing currency crises or needing debt refinancing to adopt the policy cocktail en bloc, or piecemeal for particular projects. In Eastern and Central Europe after 1989, it took the extreme form of “shock therapy”—the privatization and deregulation of whole economies at top speed and regardless of transition costs.

The result in many countries has been a sharp decline, of indefinite duration, in standards of living for the mass of the market-shocked population—a decline that continues even when growth resumes. The beneficiaries of growth under the Consensus are local elites who take over (or loot) privatized industries or enter small business, multinationals that acquire failing local industries too large for domestic appropriation (typically, these exploit primary products such as oil), and clients recruited by the new entrepreneurial class to serve its interests within the government."

It should be interesting to see who the new elite in Iraq will turn out to be. The study of economic elites in various countries and societies is highly overlooked, yet amazing to the extent that it provides detailed descriptions of periods of social change and economic foment.

Up Putin's sleeve.

As usual, Russian President Vladimir Putin holds the interesting negotiating chips. This past Thursday, Putin said that Russia could switch its trade in oil from dollars to euros, a move that could have far-reaching repercussions for the global balance of power -- potentially hurting the U.S. dollar and economy and offering a tremendous boost to the European economy.

Time to get over the uniform fetish.

Michael Kinsley tries to show that, protest votes aside, so-called "pragmatic liberals" love a man in uniform. Kinsley is right to lament the rise of Clark at the expense of Dean. The only thing Wesley Clark knows anything about-- namely, war-- he does badly (just take a look at Kosovo and try to tell me it was a success).

Bad company.

Thanks to Bill Korner for bringing to my attention this great website about which company will tank next.

Iraq contracts anyone?

Here is a great summary of the companies like Halliburton that will benefit from Iraqi reconstruction contracts. In case some of you are wondering what the hold-up at the UN is all about, let me clear it up: everyone wants a piece of the reconstruction contract pie. Lip service to human rights aside, war has always been about money. Perhaps peace is about money too.

Being legitimately black nowadays just got a little harder.

Erin Aubry Kaplan pens an interesting piece on being black in the age of "ethnic DNA tests". Kaplan discusses the plight of a friend whose skin looks black but whose DNA test reveals that he is mostly Indo-European. Kaplan writes:

"Being black may still not be the most advantageous thing in the world, but being nothing or being neutral – the rallying cry of modern-day multiculturalists – has never made any emotional or real-world sense. Color marks you, but your membership in black society also gives you an indestructible house to live in and a bed to rest on. I can't imagine growing up any other way."