"Salah, ek dum phulto bhankas kidney mila dha yaar...Masth karkey mein woh madherchoud ko bhej detha... kider se aay maayth nai yeh lund fakir chini mera sale poora ullat phulat liya re..." "Kahan se mein aaj ka FDI online sale quota reach karooon... yeh job ich poora ek dum pakaao hein re!!!"
That's a line to be uttered in a chai-walah's dabbha in Mumbai 2020, by some savvy call-center employee trying to make an honest days living. What's he selling- a couple of kidneys, livers, sickle cell anaemic cure packages, organ donor compensation fund diwali savings bonus, still born babies for stem cell research, LGBTQ child care savings pack, the list goes on...
His job description involves snipping for better deals, bidding wars, trying to get the best price for his client - an 'anghutta-chaap ghatti' in rural india selling his/her organs at premium for a signing bonus of 6 months supply of drinking water for the family.
"Innak endhinaada monjathi pennu, kaarukunnah aad porey!" asks an entrepreneur in North Kerala to a young man who applies for a visa to go to the Gulf, his gullibility and will to rid his family of their poverty will succumb him to rent his wife's womb to a gay couple in North America who will in turn sponsor his trip and family for the next 9 months. The entrepreneur will be the effective middle man who make's sure he gets his cut.
Online snipping for last minute deals on organs will be quite the lucrative venture capitalist enterprise to take off. Call centers, will have blackberry wielding hench men on the streets look out for a prime candidate.
Fuzzy moral arguements and kosheresque trade sentiments find no place in the potential of the commerce in flesh trade. Once state support will be acquired the flood gates will have opened. The Halal kidney store on Mohammed Ali Road, will have SMS of a "Gora khoon - 5 litre" CS Shivaji Airport will accept the FedEx package and Visa payment for the trade. When an elderly Paris Hilton wants a new liver, because her old one was damaged she will have the power and prowess to acquire one from the shoe-shine kid who sits in front of Infosys, Bangalore. Nicole Ritche might prefer an organic solution to skin grafting than the 90's botox treatement Cher had. Bahraini National Mohammed Jaffer (formerly known as Michael Jackson) will have the "Peal the World" Campaign to raise awareness of the organ trading little boys have to undergo...
In the words of Appu,"Thank You, Come Again!"
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Implementing an Effective Leadership Development Program for Community College Students
Abstract
Community colleges are a democratizing force in post-secondary education, different from but equal to universities. They offer an expedient route to the labour market. This suggests the need for colleges to focus on the development of their students' leadership ability and to implement strategies for evaluating the success of leadership development efforts on college campuses. Student leadership development administered as a comprehensive, integrated and complimentary program is a proactive and strategic investment in the students’ educational experience. The goal of this paper is to document some of the ways community colleges can further promote student leadership development and implement innovative approaches to increase student engagement.
Click here for full paper.
Community colleges are a democratizing force in post-secondary education, different from but equal to universities. They offer an expedient route to the labour market. This suggests the need for colleges to focus on the development of their students' leadership ability and to implement strategies for evaluating the success of leadership development efforts on college campuses. Student leadership development administered as a comprehensive, integrated and complimentary program is a proactive and strategic investment in the students’ educational experience. The goal of this paper is to document some of the ways community colleges can further promote student leadership development and implement innovative approaches to increase student engagement.
Click here for full paper.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
I Wanna Be Like You
Artist: Louis PrimaSong: Wanna Be Like You
Album: The Jungle Book Soundtrack
"Now I'm the king of the swingers
Oh, the jungle VIP
I've reached the top and had to stop
And that's what botherin' me
I wanna be a man, mancub
And stroll right into town
And be just like the other men
I'm tired of monkeyin' around!"
Oh, the jungle VIP
I've reached the top and had to stop
And that's what botherin' me
I wanna be a man, mancub
And stroll right into town
And be just like the other men
I'm tired of monkeyin' around!"
That's my theme song in my graduating semester in 'Electronics Engineering Technology' a 3 Year Diploma Program here at Mohawk College. Why?
My 'terminal education' credits can't be 'transfered' to an undergraduate degree in any university in the province of Ontario. Elitist educational institutions (read universities) consider the occupational mobility of college graduates is better restricted because of the narrow skills and credentials college students' possess. So I better start 'cooling-out' because there's an unskilled, low-level service sector job with my name on it. I don't know if I will be as fortunate as some of my peers who will very shortly be employed in paraprofessional/assistant level jobs working under university graduates, in jobs divorced from all conceptual level work.
Today as I ride my 'cycle of despair' dodging motivational difficulties I ask myself did my diploma strengthen my academic skills and how did it lead to higher educational attainment. As my terminal vocational training comes to a close, I cringe thinking of the tommorow when I wait in line to be the next hired hand. I am disoriented as I try to comprehend this system of dual expectations and it's ambiguous commitment to democracy and education for all.
I have demonstrated by compliance to the system, have I not? I have jumped through all the attritional hoops of academia to reach thus far, ready to advance to the next ideological boot-camp. But then why isn't my diploma being considered an objective indicator of knowledge, why do the registrar's at universities treat me like a leper when I ask about transfer agreements.
Are there any educational reconstructionists in the theatre tonight? Anybody out there who's interested in improving my position in the educational hierarchy. Maybe you could ask the loyal gatekeepers who have pledged their allegiance to the system. How absurd would it be to demand for a "call of change", to be accepted as equal participants in a flat global terrain. It would be impossible for today's college graduate to continue to adhere to many of the traditional claims of the college system. The fallen statue of Mercury (Roman god of trade, profit and commerce) at the old Mercury Mills site is a reminder of why we don't study at the Provincial Institute of Textiles.
Are there any professionally competent, socially responsible and interculturally literate college students out there? Can you help me address this socially untenable system of implied superiority of an elite community of post secondary students and the rejection of all others. Would you help me examine the social inequalities in access to technology and its implications for educational equity.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Bombay Dreams
I was reading up my older blogs and noticed the last cpl of months that stuff I had been getting was very strait jacket like ...Now that I'm on the cusp with no major projects that I have undertaken I can kick my legs up and write something sinister... Something doggone stupid.. something un-nerving... preposterous... necrophilia, world war 3 they were all topics i had thought of... but here's something better...
The Hindu speakz of a drug bust in Calcutta. Some bad ass amount of E, so now I ask you dear reader, did u really expect IT, Spicy-India-Chai-Tea and Old Navy T-Shirts to be only exports to the west. I was just about waiting to dig this up and show case it..... Sure every one knew abt the slave trade in philipines, the child porn in Thailand, the opium trade of yester years out of China, the desginer drugs out of Hong Kong. But the ganja land of south asia couldnt be safe haven for synthetic drugs now can they...
The Frontline sez Indian immigrants bring drugs to honky-tonk towns and damage the urban youth... that's a hoot if you ask me..
But hey how about the raves in B'lore...read The Hindu ... see the beauty of the drug milieu in India is paan waalah's can sell u XTC, ICE and crack... the big boyz in bombay's underworld will make a cut... and so will the local goondahs... professional college students are just where the west wants them to be... rattling the cages of cultural confines and ready to do something daring and rebellious... call center telemarketers make too much expendable money so do the software code gurus ... and the stress of the western work style taking it's toll on the youth...
Goa, Bombay and B'lore are the prime circuits for these outfits to take camp... but i'dnt be surprised when the peddler on Marine Drive, Kochi comes up with a line that's globalization .. that's outsourcing... the west taught the sepoy's to smoke their crummy cigarette's and provided hootch and cigarette's to them for free...Opium and heroin can move over as designer synthetic drugs will rule the roost... txt msgs will fly across the globe about how when and where the payload will be delivered... It'll be 6 sigma efficient and supply chain managed.. The way I see it for every brown-nosed white apologetic ass in a MNC job there's a disillusioned unemployed sorry ass with just as much potential.. and all those kids need to keep busy and make a lil dough while they are at it ... but be careful kids ...there might be snitches..the TOI sez there will be... the Shashi Kapoor from Don wanna be's...
So India... Bombay Dreams are just around the corner.. Rohypnol is just a click or SMS away.....
The Hindu speakz of a drug bust in Calcutta. Some bad ass amount of E, so now I ask you dear reader, did u really expect IT, Spicy-India-Chai-Tea and Old Navy T-Shirts to be only exports to the west. I was just about waiting to dig this up and show case it..... Sure every one knew abt the slave trade in philipines, the child porn in Thailand, the opium trade of yester years out of China, the desginer drugs out of Hong Kong. But the ganja land of south asia couldnt be safe haven for synthetic drugs now can they...
The Frontline sez Indian immigrants bring drugs to honky-tonk towns and damage the urban youth... that's a hoot if you ask me..
But hey how about the raves in B'lore...read The Hindu ... see the beauty of the drug milieu in India is paan waalah's can sell u XTC, ICE and crack... the big boyz in bombay's underworld will make a cut... and so will the local goondahs... professional college students are just where the west wants them to be... rattling the cages of cultural confines and ready to do something daring and rebellious... call center telemarketers make too much expendable money so do the software code gurus ... and the stress of the western work style taking it's toll on the youth...
Goa, Bombay and B'lore are the prime circuits for these outfits to take camp... but i'dnt be surprised when the peddler on Marine Drive, Kochi comes up with a line that's globalization .. that's outsourcing... the west taught the sepoy's to smoke their crummy cigarette's and provided hootch and cigarette's to them for free...Opium and heroin can move over as designer synthetic drugs will rule the roost... txt msgs will fly across the globe about how when and where the payload will be delivered... It'll be 6 sigma efficient and supply chain managed.. The way I see it for every brown-nosed white apologetic ass in a MNC job there's a disillusioned unemployed sorry ass with just as much potential.. and all those kids need to keep busy and make a lil dough while they are at it ... but be careful kids ...there might be snitches..the TOI sez there will be... the Shashi Kapoor from Don wanna be's...
So India... Bombay Dreams are just around the corner.. Rohypnol is just a click or SMS away.....
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Developing an Effective Leadership Development Program for Community College Students
Abstract
Community colleges are a democratizing force in post-secondary education, different from but equal to universities. They offer an expedient route to the labour market. This suggests the need for colleges to focus on the development of their students' leadership ability and to implement strategies for evaluating the success of leadership development efforts on college campuses. The goal of this paper is to document some of the ways community colleges can further promote student leadership development and implement innovative approaches to increase student engagement.
Click here to read the complete draft.
Community colleges are a democratizing force in post-secondary education, different from but equal to universities. They offer an expedient route to the labour market. This suggests the need for colleges to focus on the development of their students' leadership ability and to implement strategies for evaluating the success of leadership development efforts on college campuses. The goal of this paper is to document some of the ways community colleges can further promote student leadership development and implement innovative approaches to increase student engagement.
Click here to read the complete draft.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
INCIDENCE DE L’ÉCONOMIE CHINOISE SUR L’ÉCONOMIE DE L’AMÉRIQUE DU NORD
Lentement, solennellement, Napoléon a tracé de l’index le contour d’un vaste pays sur une carte du monde et a dit de ce « géant endormi » : « Quand la Chine s’éveillera, le monde tremblera ». Cette phrase prophétique prend tout son sens aujourd’hui. La Chine est bien réveillée, sur le plan économique et sur le plan stratégique. Sortie indemne de la crise financière de l’Asie orientale et de l’épidémie de SRAS, l’économie chinoise affiche une progression inégalée sur la planète qui l’a fait passer au sixième rang dans le monde en termes de PIB. En 2003, la Chine était la seconde économie du monde, tout de suite derrière les États-Unis et affichait le taux de croissance le plus élevé de tous les grands pays, sans parler du fait qu’elle a été accueillie à bras ouverts au Conseil général de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce, après sa transformation d’usine du monde en marché du monde.
C’est une réussite à double tranchant. Du haut de sa puissance économique, la Chine défie l’Amérique du Nord sur le plan économique. C’est un peu comme si elle disait : « Faites comme nous ou c’est nous qui vous dicterons votre conduite! ». Il suffit d’observer avec quelle lenteur l’Amérique du Nord répond à ces défis et l’agilité croissante de la Chine en matière économique et politique pour savoir qui occupera le bureau du coin dans l’économie mondiale de demain. L’avenir appartiendra à l’économie qui saura fournir à ses travailleurs toute l’étendue et la profondeur de la formation scientifique nécessaire dans le nouveau milieu du travail. L’élue recevra une partie des fruits de la nouvelle richesse. Une économie lente à bâtir sa capacité scientifique et technologique c’est une économie qui ne connaît pas le remède aux ajustements structurels constants qu’exige la mondialisation.
La contestation par la Chine de l’influence économique et stratégique de l’Amérique du Nord commence à peine à se dessiner. Il faudra à celle-ci encore des dizaines d’années avant de rejoindre l’Amérique du Nord sur le plan technologique et sur le plan de la gestion.
Pour comprendre l’incidence, au niveau mondial, de l’émergence de la Chine en tant que grande puissance économique, il faut savoir que la répartition de la main-d’œuvre mondiale à la fin du dernier millénaire était très artificielle. L’isolement volontaire de la Chine a empêché le cinquième de la race humaine de participer vraiment aux systèmes mondiaux de commerce et d’investissement. C’est pour cette raison que l’intégration accélérée de la Chine à l’économie mondiale amorcée au milieu des années 1990 a entraîné une vague de délocalisations en Chine d’industries à forte intensité de main-d’œuvre.
La transformation de la Chine en superpuissance industrielle a entraîné la marchandisation de presque tous les produits qui peuvent être fabriqués de nos jours. La concurrence de la Chine, avantagée par de faibles coûts de revient, a fait baisser considérablement les prix des biens vendus dans le monde, notamment en Amérique du Nord, où les profits reculent.
La partie ne se joue pas à armes égales. La Chine ne fait pas grand-chose pour endiguer les violations de brevet et de droit d’auteur qui contribuent à la production de copies bon marché des produits de ses concurrents. Elle sait aussi s’y prendre pour obtenir des transferts de technologie qui aideront son industrie à se développer.
La réponse de l’Amérique du Nord est loin d’être exemplaire. Les sociétés transnationales jouent un rôle clé dans la mondialisation de l’activité économique. Le commerce international, l’investissement étranger direct et les ventes des filiales étrangères en Chine augmentent beaucoup plus vite que leur PIB. Une grande partie des échanges internationaux des transnationales interviennent entre divisions d’une même multinationale (échanges internes) et non entre sociétés indépendantes l’une de l’autre. La localisation des activités économiques des transnationales locales et étrangères est de plus en plus tributaire de la conjoncture économique et politique, des mesures fiscales et des encouragements à l’investissement. Autrement dit, les transnationales se préoccupent de moins en moins des conséquences de leur comportement.
Les Nord-Américains ne pourront plus très longtemps vivre dans une région vouée au libre-échange et par conséquent moins portée au protectionnisme. Les Chinois ont su contrer cette éventualité et s’assurer un accès à leur plus gros marché d’exportation et alimenter ainsi le moteur de leur croissance. L’adhésion de la Chine à l’OMC empêche les États-Unis de décider impulsivement et unilatéralement de remplacer les approvisionnements économiques en provenance de la Chine en suspendant la Permanent Normal Trade Relations Act et de relever les droits de douane sur les importations en provenance de la Chine. L’adhésion de la Chine à l’OMC rehausse la fiabilité de la Chine comme fournisseur régulier des marchés d’Amérique du Nord.
Les fabricants nord-américains de produits à forte intensité de main-d’œuvre destinés à la vente sur les marchés intérieurs, des économies où les revenus sont élevés, diminuent maintenant leurs frais de gestion en réduisant la diversification géographique des unités de production. Une partie croissante de la production est maintenant localisée en Chine parce que les coûts de main-d’œuvre y sont moins élevés que dans les quatre grands de l’ANASE [Indonésie, Malaisie, Philippines et Thaïlande].
Les compagnies nord-américaines doivent se concentrer davantage sur les services à valeur ajoutée de la chaîne d’approvisionnement mondiale – conception, service après-vente, design, conception simultanée, ainsi que financement et assurance de la qualité. Pour exploiter les possibilités que présentent les marchés émergents et soutenir la concurrence de la Chine, l’Amérique du Nord doit forcer sur l’innovation et la productivité en investissant dans la recherche-développement, la fabrication et le génie, le capital humain et la révision des réglementations.
En bout de ligne, la seule manière pour les fabricants d’Amérique du Nord de soutenir la concurrence et demeurer rentables consiste à offrir un produit différencié – répondre aux besoins des clients par une spécialisation, une conception et un service fonctionnels à un degré que personne d’autre n’offre.
Le potentiel de croissance de la Chine et son savoir-faire économique laissent présager une hégémonie future. L’orientation future de la Chine, le rythme des réformes et de la restructuration des institutions et une bonne partie de l’activité du secteur privé dépendent de l’action du Parti communiste, guidé par ses dirigeants de Pékin. Le défi pour la Chine consiste à créer 20 millions de nouveaux emplois par an rien que pour empêcher le taux de chômage d’augmenter. La Chine n’est pas en mesure d’employer du capital local pour créer davantage d’emplois dans le secteur privé, la demande de produits de consommation grimpe en flèche et le système bancaire est inefficace : la Chine a un bon nombre de problèmes socio-économiques à régler. Tout montre qu’elle est en voie de le faire.
Les extraordinaires résultats économiques et commerciaux de la Chine ont modifié les rôles de l’État et du secteur privé dans ce pays qui s’ouvre à l’économie de marché. L’expansion économique spectaculaire de la Chine est alimentée par des rentrées d’investissements étrangers directs considérables. Environ 60 % des exportations de la Chine vers le marché nord-américain proviennent de compagnies nord-américaines qui y ont installé des usines de production.
Une autre caractéristique de l’expansion économique de la Chine est l’importance des industries de haute technologie particulièrement dans les domaines de l’électronique et de l’informatique. La Chine n’est pas seulement une superpuissance industrielle, mais aussi un maillon des chaînes d’approvisionnement mondiales des fabricants. Elle n’est pas simplement un centre mondial de fabrication de produits bon marché à forte intensité de main-d’œuvre, mais elle est aussi devenue la source d’une demande importante de fournitures techniques évoluées à forte intensité de capital.
Pour les fabricants et les exportateurs d’Amérique du Nord, la Chine est une source de croissance commerciale, de même qu’un moyen de réduire les coûts de revient, d’améliorer l’efficacité de la chaîne de production, de stimuler les profits et de réduire les prix pour les clients. La Chine ne peut pas exporter en Amérique du Nord sans importer, mais cela exigerait une refonte complète des structures de production de l’est et du sud-est de l’Asie. Un thème sous-jacent s’impose : prospérité ou disette, mais pour qui?
L’arrivée de la Chine dans la fraternité économique par son adhésion à l’OMC ne fait pas que stimuler la sécurité économique. C’est un champ de force qui la protège contre les sorts que pourraient lui jeter la Permanent Normal Trade Relations Act des États-Unis et les nécromanciens du Congrès américain maîtres de son statut de nation la plus favorisée.
L’ascension de l’économie industrielle de la Chine continuera d’avoir des retombées de grande portée sur la logistique mondiale des biens et services et sur l’avenir du secteur manufacturier en Amérique du Nord. La Chine pose déjà d’importants défis aux entreprises et aux gouvernements de l’Amérique du Nord et à son économie dans son ensemble.
L’émergence de la Chine sur le plan des exportations et du PIB au-dessus des cinq économies développées d’Asie de l’Est [Hong Kong, Japon, Singapour, Corée du Sud et Taiwan] présente un important défi aux gouvernements d’Amérique du Nord; il y a la question du recyclage des travailleurs qui perdront leur emploi dans le secteur manufacturier au nom du libre-échange. Les fondements du gouvernement vont vaciller quand la volonté politique et la politique économique s’affronteront pour déterminer s’il faut imposer des mesures protectionnistes au lieu de financer des mesures d’adaptation pour aider les travailleurs des secteurs touchés.
Il est temps que l’Amérique du Nord se réveille! La montée de la Chine ne sonne pas le glas de la fabrication en Amérique du Nord. Elle entraînera sans doute une transition vers des opérations de transformation à plus grande valeur ajoutée et davantage d’emplois dans le secteur des services. Elle forcera une rationalisation des opérations des entreprises et stimulera l’innovation et la productivité. La concurrence de l’économie chinoise s’est intensifiée en Amérique du Nord et dans le monde entier. L’expansion rapide de l’économie chinoise présente des perspectives extrêmement intéressantes sur le plan du commerce et de l’investissement pour les entreprises américaines et élargit la palette des importations à des prix très concurrentiels. Cette expansion augmente parallèlement la concurrence sur les marchés d’exportation nord-américains.
La Chine grimpe rapidement dans la chaîne de valeur. Vu la mobilité des capitaux et des ouvriers spécialisés dans le monde, l’Amérique du Nord doit combler l’écart au chapitre de la productivité et des revenus pour attirer et retenir des activités à forte valeur ajoutée et générer un vigoureux cycle d’accumulation de capital, d’afflux des cerveaux et de forte croissance économique.
Les fabricants d’Amérique du Nord devront profiter des possibilités d’externalisation de leurs activités que présente la Chine de même que des possibilités d’exportation sur le marché chinois ou d’investissement et de fabrication en Chine. L’avantage concurrentiel des fabricants d’Amérique du Nord dépendra de la proximité de l’entreprise de ses clients et de ses rapports avec eux. Les compagnies capables de s’adapter rapidement jouiront d’un avantage sur le plan des délais d’exécution et de la personnalisation des produits et services.
Pour pleinement profiter de l’intégration économique avec la Chine, les économies d’Amérique du Nord devront surmonter des obstacles formidables et devenir des destinations très compétitives pour l’investissement, les travailleurs spécialisés et les activités à forte valeur ajoutée. Les entreprises devront réduire considérablement les coûts de transport, d’information et de communication, faire des progrès rapides au niveau des techniques de production, et faire de la prospection au niveau des marchés, des capitaux, du capital humain et des activités à forte valeur ajoutée à l’échelle internationale. Il est par ailleurs crucial que les gouvernements encouragent la conclusion d’ententes commerciales bilatérales, régionales et multilatérales pour permettre à l’Amérique du Nord de contribuer à sa manière à l’internationalisation de l’activité économique.
Click here for English version
C’est une réussite à double tranchant. Du haut de sa puissance économique, la Chine défie l’Amérique du Nord sur le plan économique. C’est un peu comme si elle disait : « Faites comme nous ou c’est nous qui vous dicterons votre conduite! ». Il suffit d’observer avec quelle lenteur l’Amérique du Nord répond à ces défis et l’agilité croissante de la Chine en matière économique et politique pour savoir qui occupera le bureau du coin dans l’économie mondiale de demain. L’avenir appartiendra à l’économie qui saura fournir à ses travailleurs toute l’étendue et la profondeur de la formation scientifique nécessaire dans le nouveau milieu du travail. L’élue recevra une partie des fruits de la nouvelle richesse. Une économie lente à bâtir sa capacité scientifique et technologique c’est une économie qui ne connaît pas le remède aux ajustements structurels constants qu’exige la mondialisation.
La contestation par la Chine de l’influence économique et stratégique de l’Amérique du Nord commence à peine à se dessiner. Il faudra à celle-ci encore des dizaines d’années avant de rejoindre l’Amérique du Nord sur le plan technologique et sur le plan de la gestion.
Pour comprendre l’incidence, au niveau mondial, de l’émergence de la Chine en tant que grande puissance économique, il faut savoir que la répartition de la main-d’œuvre mondiale à la fin du dernier millénaire était très artificielle. L’isolement volontaire de la Chine a empêché le cinquième de la race humaine de participer vraiment aux systèmes mondiaux de commerce et d’investissement. C’est pour cette raison que l’intégration accélérée de la Chine à l’économie mondiale amorcée au milieu des années 1990 a entraîné une vague de délocalisations en Chine d’industries à forte intensité de main-d’œuvre.
La transformation de la Chine en superpuissance industrielle a entraîné la marchandisation de presque tous les produits qui peuvent être fabriqués de nos jours. La concurrence de la Chine, avantagée par de faibles coûts de revient, a fait baisser considérablement les prix des biens vendus dans le monde, notamment en Amérique du Nord, où les profits reculent.
La partie ne se joue pas à armes égales. La Chine ne fait pas grand-chose pour endiguer les violations de brevet et de droit d’auteur qui contribuent à la production de copies bon marché des produits de ses concurrents. Elle sait aussi s’y prendre pour obtenir des transferts de technologie qui aideront son industrie à se développer.
La réponse de l’Amérique du Nord est loin d’être exemplaire. Les sociétés transnationales jouent un rôle clé dans la mondialisation de l’activité économique. Le commerce international, l’investissement étranger direct et les ventes des filiales étrangères en Chine augmentent beaucoup plus vite que leur PIB. Une grande partie des échanges internationaux des transnationales interviennent entre divisions d’une même multinationale (échanges internes) et non entre sociétés indépendantes l’une de l’autre. La localisation des activités économiques des transnationales locales et étrangères est de plus en plus tributaire de la conjoncture économique et politique, des mesures fiscales et des encouragements à l’investissement. Autrement dit, les transnationales se préoccupent de moins en moins des conséquences de leur comportement.
Les Nord-Américains ne pourront plus très longtemps vivre dans une région vouée au libre-échange et par conséquent moins portée au protectionnisme. Les Chinois ont su contrer cette éventualité et s’assurer un accès à leur plus gros marché d’exportation et alimenter ainsi le moteur de leur croissance. L’adhésion de la Chine à l’OMC empêche les États-Unis de décider impulsivement et unilatéralement de remplacer les approvisionnements économiques en provenance de la Chine en suspendant la Permanent Normal Trade Relations Act et de relever les droits de douane sur les importations en provenance de la Chine. L’adhésion de la Chine à l’OMC rehausse la fiabilité de la Chine comme fournisseur régulier des marchés d’Amérique du Nord.
Les fabricants nord-américains de produits à forte intensité de main-d’œuvre destinés à la vente sur les marchés intérieurs, des économies où les revenus sont élevés, diminuent maintenant leurs frais de gestion en réduisant la diversification géographique des unités de production. Une partie croissante de la production est maintenant localisée en Chine parce que les coûts de main-d’œuvre y sont moins élevés que dans les quatre grands de l’ANASE [Indonésie, Malaisie, Philippines et Thaïlande].
Les compagnies nord-américaines doivent se concentrer davantage sur les services à valeur ajoutée de la chaîne d’approvisionnement mondiale – conception, service après-vente, design, conception simultanée, ainsi que financement et assurance de la qualité. Pour exploiter les possibilités que présentent les marchés émergents et soutenir la concurrence de la Chine, l’Amérique du Nord doit forcer sur l’innovation et la productivité en investissant dans la recherche-développement, la fabrication et le génie, le capital humain et la révision des réglementations.
En bout de ligne, la seule manière pour les fabricants d’Amérique du Nord de soutenir la concurrence et demeurer rentables consiste à offrir un produit différencié – répondre aux besoins des clients par une spécialisation, une conception et un service fonctionnels à un degré que personne d’autre n’offre.
Le potentiel de croissance de la Chine et son savoir-faire économique laissent présager une hégémonie future. L’orientation future de la Chine, le rythme des réformes et de la restructuration des institutions et une bonne partie de l’activité du secteur privé dépendent de l’action du Parti communiste, guidé par ses dirigeants de Pékin. Le défi pour la Chine consiste à créer 20 millions de nouveaux emplois par an rien que pour empêcher le taux de chômage d’augmenter. La Chine n’est pas en mesure d’employer du capital local pour créer davantage d’emplois dans le secteur privé, la demande de produits de consommation grimpe en flèche et le système bancaire est inefficace : la Chine a un bon nombre de problèmes socio-économiques à régler. Tout montre qu’elle est en voie de le faire.
Les extraordinaires résultats économiques et commerciaux de la Chine ont modifié les rôles de l’État et du secteur privé dans ce pays qui s’ouvre à l’économie de marché. L’expansion économique spectaculaire de la Chine est alimentée par des rentrées d’investissements étrangers directs considérables. Environ 60 % des exportations de la Chine vers le marché nord-américain proviennent de compagnies nord-américaines qui y ont installé des usines de production.
Une autre caractéristique de l’expansion économique de la Chine est l’importance des industries de haute technologie particulièrement dans les domaines de l’électronique et de l’informatique. La Chine n’est pas seulement une superpuissance industrielle, mais aussi un maillon des chaînes d’approvisionnement mondiales des fabricants. Elle n’est pas simplement un centre mondial de fabrication de produits bon marché à forte intensité de main-d’œuvre, mais elle est aussi devenue la source d’une demande importante de fournitures techniques évoluées à forte intensité de capital.
Pour les fabricants et les exportateurs d’Amérique du Nord, la Chine est une source de croissance commerciale, de même qu’un moyen de réduire les coûts de revient, d’améliorer l’efficacité de la chaîne de production, de stimuler les profits et de réduire les prix pour les clients. La Chine ne peut pas exporter en Amérique du Nord sans importer, mais cela exigerait une refonte complète des structures de production de l’est et du sud-est de l’Asie. Un thème sous-jacent s’impose : prospérité ou disette, mais pour qui?
L’arrivée de la Chine dans la fraternité économique par son adhésion à l’OMC ne fait pas que stimuler la sécurité économique. C’est un champ de force qui la protège contre les sorts que pourraient lui jeter la Permanent Normal Trade Relations Act des États-Unis et les nécromanciens du Congrès américain maîtres de son statut de nation la plus favorisée.
L’ascension de l’économie industrielle de la Chine continuera d’avoir des retombées de grande portée sur la logistique mondiale des biens et services et sur l’avenir du secteur manufacturier en Amérique du Nord. La Chine pose déjà d’importants défis aux entreprises et aux gouvernements de l’Amérique du Nord et à son économie dans son ensemble.
L’émergence de la Chine sur le plan des exportations et du PIB au-dessus des cinq économies développées d’Asie de l’Est [Hong Kong, Japon, Singapour, Corée du Sud et Taiwan] présente un important défi aux gouvernements d’Amérique du Nord; il y a la question du recyclage des travailleurs qui perdront leur emploi dans le secteur manufacturier au nom du libre-échange. Les fondements du gouvernement vont vaciller quand la volonté politique et la politique économique s’affronteront pour déterminer s’il faut imposer des mesures protectionnistes au lieu de financer des mesures d’adaptation pour aider les travailleurs des secteurs touchés.
Il est temps que l’Amérique du Nord se réveille! La montée de la Chine ne sonne pas le glas de la fabrication en Amérique du Nord. Elle entraînera sans doute une transition vers des opérations de transformation à plus grande valeur ajoutée et davantage d’emplois dans le secteur des services. Elle forcera une rationalisation des opérations des entreprises et stimulera l’innovation et la productivité. La concurrence de l’économie chinoise s’est intensifiée en Amérique du Nord et dans le monde entier. L’expansion rapide de l’économie chinoise présente des perspectives extrêmement intéressantes sur le plan du commerce et de l’investissement pour les entreprises américaines et élargit la palette des importations à des prix très concurrentiels. Cette expansion augmente parallèlement la concurrence sur les marchés d’exportation nord-américains.
La Chine grimpe rapidement dans la chaîne de valeur. Vu la mobilité des capitaux et des ouvriers spécialisés dans le monde, l’Amérique du Nord doit combler l’écart au chapitre de la productivité et des revenus pour attirer et retenir des activités à forte valeur ajoutée et générer un vigoureux cycle d’accumulation de capital, d’afflux des cerveaux et de forte croissance économique.
Les fabricants d’Amérique du Nord devront profiter des possibilités d’externalisation de leurs activités que présente la Chine de même que des possibilités d’exportation sur le marché chinois ou d’investissement et de fabrication en Chine. L’avantage concurrentiel des fabricants d’Amérique du Nord dépendra de la proximité de l’entreprise de ses clients et de ses rapports avec eux. Les compagnies capables de s’adapter rapidement jouiront d’un avantage sur le plan des délais d’exécution et de la personnalisation des produits et services.
Pour pleinement profiter de l’intégration économique avec la Chine, les économies d’Amérique du Nord devront surmonter des obstacles formidables et devenir des destinations très compétitives pour l’investissement, les travailleurs spécialisés et les activités à forte valeur ajoutée. Les entreprises devront réduire considérablement les coûts de transport, d’information et de communication, faire des progrès rapides au niveau des techniques de production, et faire de la prospection au niveau des marchés, des capitaux, du capital humain et des activités à forte valeur ajoutée à l’échelle internationale. Il est par ailleurs crucial que les gouvernements encouragent la conclusion d’ententes commerciales bilatérales, régionales et multilatérales pour permettre à l’Amérique du Nord de contribuer à sa manière à l’internationalisation de l’activité économique.
Click here for English version
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
To Sir With Contempt
Why aren’t there more radical teachers? Is it just the difficulty of being radical in a system built around compulsion, discipline, conformity, and reproduction of the class structure? Or is part of the problem the way that people become teachers?
As teachers did your professional education and employment push you to accept a role in which you do not make a significant difference, were you selected and molded to have politically and intellectually subordinate attitudes, thereby making your creative energies available to the system.
When did the idea of "assignable curiosity" come into fruition? When did they teach the use of exams, a powerful legitimating tool used to discriminate while still making it seem to be neutral? How was the nonpartisan exam system developed while actually imposing the values of the status quo? When was it that you learned to accept standard ideas about professional behaviour? Were you told there would be an ideological conformity you would have to subject yourself to?
Employed as a brain worker your work demands advanced degrees from accredited institutions, did it ever occur to you that you indoctrine students in the mysteries of skilled labour, in technical trades without critical thinknig, social conscience, or the will to resist. Does the lack of control over the political component of your creative work ever faze you? How do you accept the norms of your employers to function as semi-autonomous, self-directing workers?
Rooted in corporate capitalism founded on a heightened division of labor, you validate social-institutional hierarchies and legitimate your own place in them at the expense of others. You hold no monopoly on knowledge -- many non-professors know as much about your subjects -- but you act based on your own judgment to promote the establishment interests. You are constrained by law but in fact, more heavily controlled by hierarchically mandated, system-wide code of conduct.
Was it the higher income, status, improved working conditions and the capacity to choose more aspects of one’s work that motivated you to enter into this field of work? Did the institutional dominance redirect your work lives? Does promotion with professional ranks hinge on such work? Did creativity give way to perceived necessity? Do you ever notice your students become less idealistic and more exhausted from the work you assign to them? When did your socio-intellectual goals get replaced by selfish commitments to compensation and rising in one’s field?
Tell me more about the transformation from truth seeker to alienated knowledge worker seeking institutional advancement and not knowledge. What's it like to be a subordinate and disciplined mind engrossed in professional work.
As teachers did your professional education and employment push you to accept a role in which you do not make a significant difference, were you selected and molded to have politically and intellectually subordinate attitudes, thereby making your creative energies available to the system.
When did the idea of "assignable curiosity" come into fruition? When did they teach the use of exams, a powerful legitimating tool used to discriminate while still making it seem to be neutral? How was the nonpartisan exam system developed while actually imposing the values of the status quo? When was it that you learned to accept standard ideas about professional behaviour? Were you told there would be an ideological conformity you would have to subject yourself to?
Employed as a brain worker your work demands advanced degrees from accredited institutions, did it ever occur to you that you indoctrine students in the mysteries of skilled labour, in technical trades without critical thinknig, social conscience, or the will to resist. Does the lack of control over the political component of your creative work ever faze you? How do you accept the norms of your employers to function as semi-autonomous, self-directing workers?
Rooted in corporate capitalism founded on a heightened division of labor, you validate social-institutional hierarchies and legitimate your own place in them at the expense of others. You hold no monopoly on knowledge -- many non-professors know as much about your subjects -- but you act based on your own judgment to promote the establishment interests. You are constrained by law but in fact, more heavily controlled by hierarchically mandated, system-wide code of conduct.
Was it the higher income, status, improved working conditions and the capacity to choose more aspects of one’s work that motivated you to enter into this field of work? Did the institutional dominance redirect your work lives? Does promotion with professional ranks hinge on such work? Did creativity give way to perceived necessity? Do you ever notice your students become less idealistic and more exhausted from the work you assign to them? When did your socio-intellectual goals get replaced by selfish commitments to compensation and rising in one’s field?
Tell me more about the transformation from truth seeker to alienated knowledge worker seeking institutional advancement and not knowledge. What's it like to be a subordinate and disciplined mind engrossed in professional work.
Saturday, April 08, 2006
The Are You a Waste of Oxygen Test
| Recycler How astounding. You scored 56% |
| You manage to skate along by wasting only about half of the oxygen you intake.... thats something, at least. Still, you may want to consider learning to breathe fecal matter, since your head is up your ass so much of the time. |
My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The Are You a Waste of Oxygen Test written by dramallamamama on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test |
Monday, March 20, 2006
The Pawntificate of Arun Jacob
Pontificate
Pronunciation: pän-'ti-f&-"kAt
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -cat·ed; -cat·ing
Etymology: Medieval Latin pontificatus, past participle of pontificare, from Latin pontific-, pontifex
1 a : to officiate as a pontiff b : to celebrate pontifical mass
2 : to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way
- pon·tif·i·ca·tion /(")pän-"ti-f&-'kA-sh&n/ noun
- pon·tif·i·ca·tor /-"kA-t&r/ noun
The following video deals with mature subject matter and is intended for adult audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.
http://toronto.cbc.ca/clips/Toronto/wmv/strike-031706.wmv
For Your Eyes Only:
CBC News
The Satellite - MSA Newspaper
Pronunciation: pän-'ti-f&-"kAt
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -cat·ed; -cat·ing
Etymology: Medieval Latin pontificatus, past participle of pontificare, from Latin pontific-, pontifex
1 a : to officiate as a pontiff b : to celebrate pontifical mass
2 : to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way
- pon·tif·i·ca·tion /(")pän-"ti-f&-'kA-sh&n/ noun
- pon·tif·i·ca·tor /-"kA-t&r/ noun
The following video deals with mature subject matter and is intended for adult audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.
http://toronto.cbc.ca/clips/Toronto/wmv/strike-031706.wmv
For Your Eyes Only:
CBC News
The Satellite - MSA Newspaper
Friday, March 03, 2006
My Inner Hero
My Inner Hero - Warrior!
I'm courageous, straightforward, and charismatic. I'm a born leader, but I'm also not afraid to face danger on my own. Nothing stands between me and victory... nothing that lives to tell the tale, anyway. If you need someone to charge into battle for you, call on me.
How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.
I'm courageous, straightforward, and charismatic. I'm a born leader, but I'm also not afraid to face danger on my own. Nothing stands between me and victory... nothing that lives to tell the tale, anyway. If you need someone to charge into battle for you, call on me.
How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Walmart - East India Company; Part Deux
North American Governments and Modern Corporations — each in its own way encourages amnesia. The facts of history are dangerous things. They call to mind ways of thinking, ways of living, that are inimical to the modern American way of life.
Corporations have emerged as the dominant governance institutions on the planet. The largest among them reach into virtually every country in the world and exceed most governments in size and power. Corporations are characters in the larger stories of industrialization and capitalism.
Then:
Everyone knows the Civil War was fought the twin issues of slavery and states' rights, but how many Americans know the Revolutionary War was fought to stop corporations? The revolt over the Tea Tax was not a revolt over the fact that the tax had been raised, but rather, over the fact that it had been lowered.
The new, lower tea tax allowed a multi-national corporation, the East India Company, to flood the American market with cheap tea, thereby driving small mom-and-pop tea shops into bankruptcy. In that respect, the Boston Tea Party was akin to an attack on the local cornerstore, the Founding Fathers were dedicated in part to destroying the ability of corporations to operate on American soil.
Now:
There is genuine apprehension that small shopkeepers and intermediaries would be adversely affected by the arrival of the global retailer in India. In the United States, many mom-and-pop corner stores have shut down and others struggle to survive where Wal-Marts open.
Small entrepreneurs and the burgeoning middle class are the backbone of the Indian economy; and it will be a sad day for the Baniyahs of Bombay when they get savaged by Wal-Mart's organizational innovations, advanced inventory system; its bulk purchases of goods, price discounts; and a ferocious anti-labor policy.
John Menzer, the president and CEO of Wal-Mart's international operations said, "India represents a $250 billion retail market, growing 7.2 percent a year, but modern retailing is just starting to emerge." India is not only "a huge organic growth market for Wal-Mart," he said, but also a fast growing outsourcing market, with an expected $1.5 billion of merchandise export to Wal-Mart stores this year.
For those you who dont like reading too much and have better things in life to do just so you know, "Wal-Mart is thinking of operating slave-labor camps in India. They plan to do this through their suppliers and, increasingly, in walmart's own name." "Manmohan Singh and Chidamabaram have jumping up and down silly, giggling like teenage school girls ever since they heard Menzer say the F-word.[FDI-Foreign Direct Inverstment-Of course!]"
Domestic:
Wal-Mart has 2000 stores worldwide; and sells almost every thing at low prices, giving low and middle-class people access to goods which would have been otherwise beyond their monthly budgets. The retailer is able to do so by buying massive quantities from inshore and offshore sources and hiring people, mostly women, at blood and sweat wages.
The seamy side of the retail giant, include its denial of health coverage to employees, unequal wages for women and the elderly, ethnic and gender discrimination and many other not-so-legal practices. Wal-Mart rezones cities, determines the real minimum wage, channels capital throughout the world -- and conducts a kind of international diplomacy with a score of nations.
International:
Walmart's business practices may have greater impact upon the world than Al Qaeda, tsunami and earthquakes if we choose to pay attention. As the retail giant scrounges and sponges the third world for cheap goods, in the process it also creates employment for hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries. In the United States it keeps overheads low by hiring mostly female workers.
Implications:
The Wal-Mart department store chain, which employs 1.3 million people at 4,700 stores worldwide, and in 2002 became the largest corporation in the world, is levelling economies of the U.S., industrial nations, and the Third World.
Wal-Mart is a driving force behind the decadent Imperial Roman model of the United States. Unable any longer to reproduce its own population's existence through its own physical economy, the United States has, for the past two decades, used an over-valued dollar to suck in physical goods from around the globe for its survival. Wal-Mart is both the public face and working sinews of that policy. It brings in cheap pants from Bangladesh, cheap shirts from China, cheap food from Mexico, etc. Workers who produce these things are paid next to nothing. Wal-Mart Is Not a Business, It's an Economic Disease.Wal-Mart is destroying communities; it represents an institutionalization of the values which stink."
Not since the days of the British East India Company as the cornerstone of the British imperial system, has one single corporate entity been responsible for so much misery. At the core of its policy, Wal-Mart demands of its suppliers that they sell goods to Wal-Mart at such a low price, that they can only do so by outsourcing their work to low-wage factories overseas. This causes the exodus of millions of production jobs from the United States and the setting up of slave-labor concentration camps around the globe. Wal-Mart's policy includes crushing living standards in America, forbidding its workers from unionizing, bringing in workers illegally from abroad, and bankrupting tens of thousands of stores and outlets on Main Street, ripping apart communities and their tax bases.
Wal-Mart uses its power to ferociously attack and decimate labor power, and it is the leading force in the mass exodus of North American manufacturing capacity and jobs. The company is militantly anti-union. Reportedly it has instructed its managers never to hire workers who once belonged to a union.
Alarms Bells in My head going off:
It's not the prowess of Walmart that worries me more than the deviance that will be employed to get the niche in the market. As of now, Indian consumers are happy with the convenience of the kirana shop but they were content with watching Ramayana & Mahabharata on the big sister channel too [DD] too. Its when Macaulay's children make food and grocery buying an ambience-driven exercise that I would be concerned.
Conclusion:
The traditional model of American capitalism from the mid-20th century was that American corporations were respected because they were globally efficient, but they also paid their workers a good wage so that workers could become consumers and part of the middle class of American society. I think we've lost that model today, because globalization has pushed Wal-Mart and companies like them towards global efficiency, where consumer prices are the only things that matter.
Corporations have emerged as the dominant governance institutions on the planet. The largest among them reach into virtually every country in the world and exceed most governments in size and power. Corporations are characters in the larger stories of industrialization and capitalism.
Then:
Everyone knows the Civil War was fought the twin issues of slavery and states' rights, but how many Americans know the Revolutionary War was fought to stop corporations? The revolt over the Tea Tax was not a revolt over the fact that the tax had been raised, but rather, over the fact that it had been lowered.
The new, lower tea tax allowed a multi-national corporation, the East India Company, to flood the American market with cheap tea, thereby driving small mom-and-pop tea shops into bankruptcy. In that respect, the Boston Tea Party was akin to an attack on the local cornerstore, the Founding Fathers were dedicated in part to destroying the ability of corporations to operate on American soil.
Now:
There is genuine apprehension that small shopkeepers and intermediaries would be adversely affected by the arrival of the global retailer in India. In the United States, many mom-and-pop corner stores have shut down and others struggle to survive where Wal-Marts open.
Small entrepreneurs and the burgeoning middle class are the backbone of the Indian economy; and it will be a sad day for the Baniyahs of Bombay when they get savaged by Wal-Mart's organizational innovations, advanced inventory system; its bulk purchases of goods, price discounts; and a ferocious anti-labor policy.
John Menzer, the president and CEO of Wal-Mart's international operations said, "India represents a $250 billion retail market, growing 7.2 percent a year, but modern retailing is just starting to emerge." India is not only "a huge organic growth market for Wal-Mart," he said, but also a fast growing outsourcing market, with an expected $1.5 billion of merchandise export to Wal-Mart stores this year.
For those you who dont like reading too much and have better things in life to do just so you know, "Wal-Mart is thinking of operating slave-labor camps in India. They plan to do this through their suppliers and, increasingly, in walmart's own name." "Manmohan Singh and Chidamabaram have jumping up and down silly, giggling like teenage school girls ever since they heard Menzer say the F-word.[FDI-Foreign Direct Inverstment-Of course!]"
Domestic:
Wal-Mart has 2000 stores worldwide; and sells almost every thing at low prices, giving low and middle-class people access to goods which would have been otherwise beyond their monthly budgets. The retailer is able to do so by buying massive quantities from inshore and offshore sources and hiring people, mostly women, at blood and sweat wages.
The seamy side of the retail giant, include its denial of health coverage to employees, unequal wages for women and the elderly, ethnic and gender discrimination and many other not-so-legal practices. Wal-Mart rezones cities, determines the real minimum wage, channels capital throughout the world -- and conducts a kind of international diplomacy with a score of nations.
International:
Walmart's business practices may have greater impact upon the world than Al Qaeda, tsunami and earthquakes if we choose to pay attention. As the retail giant scrounges and sponges the third world for cheap goods, in the process it also creates employment for hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries. In the United States it keeps overheads low by hiring mostly female workers.
Implications:
The Wal-Mart department store chain, which employs 1.3 million people at 4,700 stores worldwide, and in 2002 became the largest corporation in the world, is levelling economies of the U.S., industrial nations, and the Third World.
Wal-Mart is a driving force behind the decadent Imperial Roman model of the United States. Unable any longer to reproduce its own population's existence through its own physical economy, the United States has, for the past two decades, used an over-valued dollar to suck in physical goods from around the globe for its survival. Wal-Mart is both the public face and working sinews of that policy. It brings in cheap pants from Bangladesh, cheap shirts from China, cheap food from Mexico, etc. Workers who produce these things are paid next to nothing. Wal-Mart Is Not a Business, It's an Economic Disease.Wal-Mart is destroying communities; it represents an institutionalization of the values which stink."
Not since the days of the British East India Company as the cornerstone of the British imperial system, has one single corporate entity been responsible for so much misery. At the core of its policy, Wal-Mart demands of its suppliers that they sell goods to Wal-Mart at such a low price, that they can only do so by outsourcing their work to low-wage factories overseas. This causes the exodus of millions of production jobs from the United States and the setting up of slave-labor concentration camps around the globe. Wal-Mart's policy includes crushing living standards in America, forbidding its workers from unionizing, bringing in workers illegally from abroad, and bankrupting tens of thousands of stores and outlets on Main Street, ripping apart communities and their tax bases.
Wal-Mart uses its power to ferociously attack and decimate labor power, and it is the leading force in the mass exodus of North American manufacturing capacity and jobs. The company is militantly anti-union. Reportedly it has instructed its managers never to hire workers who once belonged to a union.
Alarms Bells in My head going off:
It's not the prowess of Walmart that worries me more than the deviance that will be employed to get the niche in the market. As of now, Indian consumers are happy with the convenience of the kirana shop but they were content with watching Ramayana & Mahabharata on the big sister channel too [DD] too. Its when Macaulay's children make food and grocery buying an ambience-driven exercise that I would be concerned.
Conclusion:
The traditional model of American capitalism from the mid-20th century was that American corporations were respected because they were globally efficient, but they also paid their workers a good wage so that workers could become consumers and part of the middle class of American society. I think we've lost that model today, because globalization has pushed Wal-Mart and companies like them towards global efficiency, where consumer prices are the only things that matter.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Confessions of an Academic Hit-man
Education, like other social services such as health, is far from being a simple ‘product’. The forces of supply and demand can’t be the only factor taken into account, because education is a right recognized in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But the education market is no longer simply a matter of choice and competition between educational institutions. The education market is a diffuse, expanding, and sophisticated system of goods, services, experiences and routes – publicly and privately provided.
The rendering of educational processes into a form which is more readily privatized – into a contractible form, into a form for cost and profit calculation, into a version of education which can be reduced to a commercial exchange based on output indicators, which can be monitored.
Within institutions – colleges, schools, universities – the means/end logic, education for economic competitiveness, can transform what were once the social process of teaching, learning and research into a set of standardized and measurable products.
As part of seeking after new ‘markets’ and the re-orientation to the customer, new forms of ‘delivery’ and consumption of higher education are being created which can result in learning becoming increasingly fragmented. Colleges have been turned into value/commodity producing enterprises. They become institutionally rearranged on a model of capitalist accumulation.
College students are rendered as active consumers but passive learners, a development that further reinforces the idea that a diploma is a commodity that (hopefully) can be exchanged for a job rather than as a liberal education that prepares students for life.
The economy of student worth - seeking success in the performative culture – is very much a product. If only there was some way of curbing the derogation of ethics, brought about by privatization and the ‘disciplines’ of the market. In the business of survival in the marketplace, the niceties of care and equal value become easily dispensable. The social relations between providers and ‘clients’ and among the providers themselves are changed significantly. This is a process of 'ethical-retooling’.
The currency of judgment in education provides an infrastructure of comparisons which value practitioners and institutions solely in terms of their productivity, their performances! Productive individuals are the central economic resource in the reformed, entrepreneurial public sector. The performances of individual subjects or organizations serve as displays of 'quality', or 'moments' of promotion or inspection.
Metrics are constructed which are used to make different sorts of activities commensurable. The use of metrics, targets, linked to incentives and sanctions, and the constant collection and publication of performance data, embeds instrumentality into everything that is done. What they stand for, or represent the worth, quality or value of an individual or organization within a field of judgment.
In the process, what we do is emptied of all substantive content. Increasingly, we choose and judge our actions in terms of affectivity and appearance. Beliefs and values are no longer important - it is output that counts. We have come to value others solely for their performance, their contribution to the performance of the group or the organization, rather than their intrinsic worth as persons.
The commoditization of academic labour has shifted the carriers of culturally valued knowledge bearers into a struggle for authenticity. Authenticity and performance are as easily replaced by compliance and silence. Academic entrepreneurs are determined to improve academic productivity creating a bureaucracy of academic auditors. The pervasive presence of business ethos in the education industry is a sign of the changing balance of power between the state and the market.
The specificities of human interactions involved in teaching and learning are being erased. The practice of teaching is being re-made and reduced to externally generated rule-following and target achievement.
The prerequisite of the commerce of education, is that Knowledge is no longer legitimated through ‘argument and reasoning', rather, through the pragmatics of ‘optimization’ – the creation of profit rather than ideals.
So, what makes up today’s college student? Today's college student is defined by shallowness, flexibility, transparency and represented within performances. Their ‘professionalism’ is in turn their willingness and ability to adapt to the necessities and vicissitudes of policy.
But the education market is no longer simply a matter of choice and competition between educational institutions. The education market is a diffuse, expanding, and sophisticated system of goods, services, experiences and routes – publicly and privately provided.
The rendering of educational processes into a form which is more readily privatized – into a contractible form, into a form for cost and profit calculation, into a version of education which can be reduced to a commercial exchange based on output indicators, which can be monitored.
Within institutions – colleges, schools, universities – the means/end logic, education for economic competitiveness, can transform what were once the social process of teaching, learning and research into a set of standardized and measurable products.
As part of seeking after new ‘markets’ and the re-orientation to the customer, new forms of ‘delivery’ and consumption of higher education are being created which can result in learning becoming increasingly fragmented. Colleges have been turned into value/commodity producing enterprises. They become institutionally rearranged on a model of capitalist accumulation.
College students are rendered as active consumers but passive learners, a development that further reinforces the idea that a diploma is a commodity that (hopefully) can be exchanged for a job rather than as a liberal education that prepares students for life.
The economy of student worth - seeking success in the performative culture – is very much a product. If only there was some way of curbing the derogation of ethics, brought about by privatization and the ‘disciplines’ of the market. In the business of survival in the marketplace, the niceties of care and equal value become easily dispensable. The social relations between providers and ‘clients’ and among the providers themselves are changed significantly. This is a process of 'ethical-retooling’.
The currency of judgment in education provides an infrastructure of comparisons which value practitioners and institutions solely in terms of their productivity, their performances! Productive individuals are the central economic resource in the reformed, entrepreneurial public sector. The performances of individual subjects or organizations serve as displays of 'quality', or 'moments' of promotion or inspection.
Metrics are constructed which are used to make different sorts of activities commensurable. The use of metrics, targets, linked to incentives and sanctions, and the constant collection and publication of performance data, embeds instrumentality into everything that is done. What they stand for, or represent the worth, quality or value of an individual or organization within a field of judgment.
In the process, what we do is emptied of all substantive content. Increasingly, we choose and judge our actions in terms of affectivity and appearance. Beliefs and values are no longer important - it is output that counts. We have come to value others solely for their performance, their contribution to the performance of the group or the organization, rather than their intrinsic worth as persons.
The commoditization of academic labour has shifted the carriers of culturally valued knowledge bearers into a struggle for authenticity. Authenticity and performance are as easily replaced by compliance and silence. Academic entrepreneurs are determined to improve academic productivity creating a bureaucracy of academic auditors. The pervasive presence of business ethos in the education industry is a sign of the changing balance of power between the state and the market.
The specificities of human interactions involved in teaching and learning are being erased. The practice of teaching is being re-made and reduced to externally generated rule-following and target achievement.
The prerequisite of the commerce of education, is that Knowledge is no longer legitimated through ‘argument and reasoning', rather, through the pragmatics of ‘optimization’ – the creation of profit rather than ideals.
So, what makes up today’s college student? Today's college student is defined by shallowness, flexibility, transparency and represented within performances. Their ‘professionalism’ is in turn their willingness and ability to adapt to the necessities and vicissitudes of policy.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
The Deviant's Advocate
Deviance is the source of all innovation. It can be a force for good or for evil. It's the reservoir of new ideas, products, personalities and markets. All innovation and progress -- commercial, biological, social, scientific, artistic, and personal -- is a direct result of deviance. Deviance is an innovation virus, one that infects the status quo, changing traditional thinking at a primal level.
Today's criminal-justice system and social register are at loggerheads. There was a time when pimps were invective oppressors of women: including physical and sexual abuse, economic oppression and abandonment. And gangsters whose deep and pervasive corruptive influences extend beyond drug trafficking, extortion, and the more traditional forms of vice. Today, "gangsta-ism" is a prerequisite to having a Top 40 hit on the Billboard since "Rhyme Pays".
Deviance drives today's social and commercial agenda. Things that we found repulsive only yesterday we embrace today. Deviance migrates from the Fringe to Social Convention, rapidly creating markets and permanently changing the rules of the social and commercial game. The pace of change has picked up to the point where the functional distance between the Fringe and Social Convention has disappeared.
Yesterday's pariah is tomorrow's market darling, and what was once socially unacceptable is suddenly hot commodity. The rate of deviant change is so intense and so relentless that we are beginning to witness multiple deviances. The game's rules keep change before we get a chance to jot them down.
Deviance is really one of us taking one step away from the middle of the road. In individuals, ideas, products or institutions it is expressed as it chugs along a fixed and predictable path.
Fringe (where it first appears in the mind of a true deviant): you'll find yourself moving from the comfort of the accepted into the fast-paced world of the trendsetter.
Edge (where it picks up a small following): you'll land in the rarified realm of the ultra cool avant-garde.
Realm of the Cool (where it begins to develop a broader following among trendsetters): you are in the seductive yet frightening world of the cultist and the fanatic.
Next Big Thing (where the formerly unthinkable becomes almost de rigueur): you'll crash head-on into the heart of social darkness: the world of naked, pure, unabashed, and largely frightening deviance.
As the deviant enter the "Realm of the Cool", it acquires a growing audience because the idea is starting to win more media coverage. What was once preposterous is now taunting and teasing the sensibility of society. Cool Hunters and culture vultures nurture this market. As the deviant achieves audience size and market scale in the Realm of the Cool, it's ready to move on to the Next Big Thing.
At that point, the original deviant is little more than a distant reference point, and has now become sanitized, commercialized, and packaged. Conventional society may flirt with the deviant when it's in the Realm of the Cool. But when the deviant hits the Next Big Thing, those in the mainstream become genuinely engaged with it.
Athletes, actors, and musicians used body ink as a way of telling the world that they were big enough and powerful enough to reject social taboos. Tattoos shifted from being badges of guilty pleasure to being visible status symbols proudly worn. Today, tattoos are an essential part of the formal uniform of any self-respecting, pampered, suburban youth intent on demonstrating his/her individualism. These days, every male athlete/rock star worthy of the name carries a storyboard of ink on their body.
The pattern is universal for all to see. In film, food, or fashion; In magazines, music, or medicine; or In wellness, fitness, or any other form of being hip. Deviance tells the story of every mass market ever created. What starts out as weird and dangerous mutates until it becomes a saleable commodity for corporate America.
Deviance ought to be a big business, if it weren't for one thing: cultural problems. Culture poses major opposing problems for deviants: Popular American culture is full of new opportunities and it loves the deviant. American corporate culture serves as an organizational anti-virus, protecting business-as-usual businesses from new opportunities. Corporate culture hates the deviant; it works to eliminate deviant employees and discourage deviant ideas. Corporate culture punishes deviant behavior and attitudes. Thanks to all this hate, most large corporate lose the opportunity to discover the future and get there first.
Companies are stuck in a deeply disturbing rut that they are unable to work out: All innovation springs from deviance. Innovation is good. But deviance always ends up being bad. As a consequence, established businesses tend to feel caught between their addictive thirst for breakthrough offerings and their fear and hatred of anyone who refuses to parrot the party line.
But it doesn't have to be that way. The history of innovation proves it; corporate leaders need to accept it: The advantage always falls to the deviant, because nature and commerce hates the status quo.
Deviants don't, won't, or can't play by the rules. Their mission to propagate deviance. They are the greatest hope that moribund corporations have for renewing their vision, energy, innovation, and future. The challenge to business is simple: Think deviant!
Today's criminal-justice system and social register are at loggerheads. There was a time when pimps were invective oppressors of women: including physical and sexual abuse, economic oppression and abandonment. And gangsters whose deep and pervasive corruptive influences extend beyond drug trafficking, extortion, and the more traditional forms of vice. Today, "gangsta-ism" is a prerequisite to having a Top 40 hit on the Billboard since "Rhyme Pays".
Deviance drives today's social and commercial agenda. Things that we found repulsive only yesterday we embrace today. Deviance migrates from the Fringe to Social Convention, rapidly creating markets and permanently changing the rules of the social and commercial game. The pace of change has picked up to the point where the functional distance between the Fringe and Social Convention has disappeared.
Yesterday's pariah is tomorrow's market darling, and what was once socially unacceptable is suddenly hot commodity. The rate of deviant change is so intense and so relentless that we are beginning to witness multiple deviances. The game's rules keep change before we get a chance to jot them down.
Deviance is really one of us taking one step away from the middle of the road. In individuals, ideas, products or institutions it is expressed as it chugs along a fixed and predictable path.
Fringe (where it first appears in the mind of a true deviant): you'll find yourself moving from the comfort of the accepted into the fast-paced world of the trendsetter.
Edge (where it picks up a small following): you'll land in the rarified realm of the ultra cool avant-garde.
Realm of the Cool (where it begins to develop a broader following among trendsetters): you are in the seductive yet frightening world of the cultist and the fanatic.
Next Big Thing (where the formerly unthinkable becomes almost de rigueur): you'll crash head-on into the heart of social darkness: the world of naked, pure, unabashed, and largely frightening deviance.
As the deviant enter the "Realm of the Cool", it acquires a growing audience because the idea is starting to win more media coverage. What was once preposterous is now taunting and teasing the sensibility of society. Cool Hunters and culture vultures nurture this market. As the deviant achieves audience size and market scale in the Realm of the Cool, it's ready to move on to the Next Big Thing.
At that point, the original deviant is little more than a distant reference point, and has now become sanitized, commercialized, and packaged. Conventional society may flirt with the deviant when it's in the Realm of the Cool. But when the deviant hits the Next Big Thing, those in the mainstream become genuinely engaged with it.
Athletes, actors, and musicians used body ink as a way of telling the world that they were big enough and powerful enough to reject social taboos. Tattoos shifted from being badges of guilty pleasure to being visible status symbols proudly worn. Today, tattoos are an essential part of the formal uniform of any self-respecting, pampered, suburban youth intent on demonstrating his/her individualism. These days, every male athlete/rock star worthy of the name carries a storyboard of ink on their body.
The pattern is universal for all to see. In film, food, or fashion; In magazines, music, or medicine; or In wellness, fitness, or any other form of being hip. Deviance tells the story of every mass market ever created. What starts out as weird and dangerous mutates until it becomes a saleable commodity for corporate America.
Deviance ought to be a big business, if it weren't for one thing: cultural problems. Culture poses major opposing problems for deviants: Popular American culture is full of new opportunities and it loves the deviant. American corporate culture serves as an organizational anti-virus, protecting business-as-usual businesses from new opportunities. Corporate culture hates the deviant; it works to eliminate deviant employees and discourage deviant ideas. Corporate culture punishes deviant behavior and attitudes. Thanks to all this hate, most large corporate lose the opportunity to discover the future and get there first.
Companies are stuck in a deeply disturbing rut that they are unable to work out: All innovation springs from deviance. Innovation is good. But deviance always ends up being bad. As a consequence, established businesses tend to feel caught between their addictive thirst for breakthrough offerings and their fear and hatred of anyone who refuses to parrot the party line.
But it doesn't have to be that way. The history of innovation proves it; corporate leaders need to accept it: The advantage always falls to the deviant, because nature and commerce hates the status quo.
Deviants don't, won't, or can't play by the rules. Their mission to propagate deviance. They are the greatest hope that moribund corporations have for renewing their vision, energy, innovation, and future. The challenge to business is simple: Think deviant!
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Dr. Bourgeoislove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bonne année
Life in North American society embodies a basic contradiction between capitalism - the luminous bourgeois ideals of peace, freedom, opportunity, love, and community and the harsh, brutal realities of the irrational economic system which encourages these ideals and feeds off their unobtainability. The whole function of trade and commerce is to exacerbate this disjunction.
Business destroys the coveted bourgeois values and the familial structures set up to secure and nurture those values. Social mobility, success, depends on brutality; this is the primary law of capitalism. Capitalist competition severely limits the ability of most people to become very close to any other people.
Religion is an important prop of bourgeois ideology, the Church represents a community of sorts. And in it's inability to comfort anyone the church shows its impotence. It is one more bourgeois ideal that does not work.
Family ties, social mobility, quest for security, companionship, and even religious values all relate and correspond to real universal human needs for community, love, respect, support, appreciation.
Social institutions which function in four levels of familial affiliations — the nuclear family, the extended family, the ethnic community, and the Church — upon which the we rely to provide and protect these values, wither before the irrational, destructive forces of capitalism, the main goal of which is profit, not the meeting of human needs.
Each institution strives unsuccessfully to create an ideal community. In all cases, the needs of business destroy whatever communal aspects these associations might provide. In fact, it is the very effort to conserve and support these families that becomes corrupted by business and destroys them.
Capitalism, at its best, must destroy human life and associations to exist. Thus, the more vigorously bourgeois society strives to achieve the ideals it has set for itself, the more destructive and corrupt it becomes.
Economic dependence is a debilitating experience for anyone in this society.
Afterthought: May the new year bring light to more people. From their own personal darkness, may each one be emancipated by his/her own free will.
Business destroys the coveted bourgeois values and the familial structures set up to secure and nurture those values. Social mobility, success, depends on brutality; this is the primary law of capitalism. Capitalist competition severely limits the ability of most people to become very close to any other people.
Religion is an important prop of bourgeois ideology, the Church represents a community of sorts. And in it's inability to comfort anyone the church shows its impotence. It is one more bourgeois ideal that does not work.
Family ties, social mobility, quest for security, companionship, and even religious values all relate and correspond to real universal human needs for community, love, respect, support, appreciation.
Social institutions which function in four levels of familial affiliations — the nuclear family, the extended family, the ethnic community, and the Church — upon which the we rely to provide and protect these values, wither before the irrational, destructive forces of capitalism, the main goal of which is profit, not the meeting of human needs.
Each institution strives unsuccessfully to create an ideal community. In all cases, the needs of business destroy whatever communal aspects these associations might provide. In fact, it is the very effort to conserve and support these families that becomes corrupted by business and destroys them.
Capitalism, at its best, must destroy human life and associations to exist. Thus, the more vigorously bourgeois society strives to achieve the ideals it has set for itself, the more destructive and corrupt it becomes.
Economic dependence is a debilitating experience for anyone in this society.
Afterthought: May the new year bring light to more people. From their own personal darkness, may each one be emancipated by his/her own free will.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
The Capitalist Who Stole Christmas
Hope you have a "Merry You-Know-What" and enjoy your "Christmas vacation"; oops I mean winter closure.
In a desperate cry to escape the tortures inflicted upon me this side of the wall of separation between church and state. I cry for help. This is not a rant about the gumming up of civilized discourse in a phlegm of hateful resentment of everything secular.
Christmas today is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. I'd actually prefer if people saw what it was they were celebrating and called it just that. In this case why bother with the terminology call it what it is - 'Winter Shopping Festival.'
It is not just on religious issues that the media and the intelligentsia seem determined to suppress, it's an ongoing symptom that plagues the entire passive aggressive global society. In the international jungle, made more dangerous by terrorist networks that circle the globe, anything that it is not defended is in jeopardy.
And if we let liberal ideals govern the nature of holidays, we'll learn that the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.
Undermining a sense of the worthiness of a society undermines that allegiance -- and, without allegiance, there is no defense. No society can survive in the long run without the allegiance of its people.
Christmas shopping is like pornography -- nobody wants to admit they've seen it, yet everybody seems to know what it looks like.
The majority of the population take part in the tradition of commercialized, secular Christmas. Why? Because it's fun, especially for the kids in the family. What kid doesn’t like candy canes, snowman cookies, Santa Claus, parties and toys?
It’s almost impossible to be a kid in North America or Western Europe and not get enraptured by the “magic” of the Christmas season. We all know that the stores we got our loved ones gifts from and the reatil sales associates who served us were referring to the commercialized, secular Christmas—the one that fattens their profits while raising credit card debt.
Essentially, Christmas has been captured by capitalism. The Grinch hasn’t stolen Christmas. Capitalism has.
Christmas is gradually being secularized into a season of general merrymaking and loads of money making. It is in transition from religious “holy day” to secular holiday.
The retail industry's main goal is for you to buy something. They will jump on any excuse you might have, to not only excite you to shop, but woo you into their establishments.
Capitalism doesn’t care. The market doesn’t care. All that matters is how to make the best profit possible from selling products to the public.
One reason you might shop is to buy a present for someone. In the very late fall, a majority of the population is not only buying one present for someone, but many presents for many people, to the delight of the retail stores (and hopefully the delight of the recipients).
Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate -- and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.
And -- before it becomes taboo -- a Happy New Year. Oh wait! It's the beginning of a new tax year, and the next five or six months will be spent working for the government.
In a desperate cry to escape the tortures inflicted upon me this side of the wall of separation between church and state. I cry for help. This is not a rant about the gumming up of civilized discourse in a phlegm of hateful resentment of everything secular.
Christmas today is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. I'd actually prefer if people saw what it was they were celebrating and called it just that. In this case why bother with the terminology call it what it is - 'Winter Shopping Festival.'
It is not just on religious issues that the media and the intelligentsia seem determined to suppress, it's an ongoing symptom that plagues the entire passive aggressive global society. In the international jungle, made more dangerous by terrorist networks that circle the globe, anything that it is not defended is in jeopardy.
And if we let liberal ideals govern the nature of holidays, we'll learn that the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.
Undermining a sense of the worthiness of a society undermines that allegiance -- and, without allegiance, there is no defense. No society can survive in the long run without the allegiance of its people.
Christmas shopping is like pornography -- nobody wants to admit they've seen it, yet everybody seems to know what it looks like.
The majority of the population take part in the tradition of commercialized, secular Christmas. Why? Because it's fun, especially for the kids in the family. What kid doesn’t like candy canes, snowman cookies, Santa Claus, parties and toys?
It’s almost impossible to be a kid in North America or Western Europe and not get enraptured by the “magic” of the Christmas season. We all know that the stores we got our loved ones gifts from and the reatil sales associates who served us were referring to the commercialized, secular Christmas—the one that fattens their profits while raising credit card debt.
Essentially, Christmas has been captured by capitalism. The Grinch hasn’t stolen Christmas. Capitalism has.
Christmas is gradually being secularized into a season of general merrymaking and loads of money making. It is in transition from religious “holy day” to secular holiday.
The retail industry's main goal is for you to buy something. They will jump on any excuse you might have, to not only excite you to shop, but woo you into their establishments.
Capitalism doesn’t care. The market doesn’t care. All that matters is how to make the best profit possible from selling products to the public.
One reason you might shop is to buy a present for someone. In the very late fall, a majority of the population is not only buying one present for someone, but many presents for many people, to the delight of the retail stores (and hopefully the delight of the recipients).
Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate -- and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.
And -- before it becomes taboo -- a Happy New Year. Oh wait! It's the beginning of a new tax year, and the next five or six months will be spent working for the government.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Are you a Macaulayalee?
Thomas Babington Macaulay's speech of Feb 2,1835, to the British Parliament speaks volumes of where we as a nation stood. Then his Minute on Indian Education, delivered in 1835 again spoke volumes of us and what was expected of us, "...a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect..."
Suggested Reading:
http://www.hindu.org/publications/fgautier/selfdenial.html
http://www.geocities.com/ifihhome/articles/sk001.html
Suggested Reading:
http://www.hindu.org/publications/fgautier/selfdenial.html
http://www.geocities.com/ifihhome/articles/sk001.html
Thursday, December 08, 2005
The Second Slice of the Chinese Melon
About 200 years ago, Napoleon Bonaparte returned from China and said, "That is a sleeping dragon. Let him sleep! If he wakes, he will shake the world."
Well, China is wide awake today, economically and strategically. The fastest growing region on the global landscape with an economy that came out unscathed out of the East-Asian Currency Crisis and the SARS epidemic just to bolster its place as the 6th largest GDP in the world. As of 2003, China was the world’s second largest economy—only surpassed by the U.S.—and had the highest growth rate of any major country. And not to mention an open arm welcome into the WTO General Council with a makeover from the World's Factory as the World's Market.
What baffles North American Economists the most is the Chinese economic engagement came with a learning curve so steep its continuing development poses a threat to them? China challenging North America's strong holds of industry & manufacturing comes with a lot of political ‘shock’ and wee bit of economic ‘awe’.
China’s economy opening up to the outside world worries those who fear that country’s huge pool of low-cost labor will drain jobs from the North American shores, and less expensive goods will spark trade problems. China’s untapped market present huge opportunities for North American businesses that would surely outweigh any loss of jobs, but the sort of jobs that had left to China a long time ago were the low-wage, low-skill jobs. Will the day when higher-wage, high-skill jobs are outsourced to China mark the epic struggle pitting the American eagle and the Chinese dragon?
There is a distinction to be made between deepening economic ties, fostering multinational trade and global manipulation by companies for their own vested interests. Outsourcing might be distressing to the system prevailing, unwilling to accept the pace of change. But unlike ever before, North America's impotency to produce timely innovative cutting-edge technologies, ideas and industries is hurting its image.
The real question is how many consumers of the 'Welfare Capitalist Economy' actually see the effects of 'Neo-Imperialist Globalization'.
The achievements on the economic plane of life in North America outstrip progress on the political plane to such an extent that economics and politics have lost their synchronicity. The flattening of the global economic playing field, in cohesion with a bastardized global political plane leaves a fertile ground for the gutters of the world to pool together.
Capitalist ruling classes in North America, have an attitude toward government economic policy that needs to be checked. This should ensure the operations of the Chinese marketers do not impede our ability to create jobs in North America and protect the working people of North America from the tremulous changes of supply and demand.
It should come as no surprise that China, of all the bureaucratized and degenerating workers states, has been able to make the greatest progress toward capitalist restoration. The strategic vision of the Chinese bureaucracy to align themselves with the neo-capitalist entrepreneurs of the globe are responsible in their getting rich and morphing into capitalists while the great majority in China, are suffering a decline in their living standards.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has embarked on a pragmatic and outward-looking program of economic development that focuses primarily on exports, foreign investment, technology and closer ties with the West.
The Chinese leadership clearly realizes that domestic development and sound trade expansion rely on stable international economic conditions. China is rapidly becoming the world's biggest "low-cost" manufacturer, flooding the global marketplace with relatively cheap electronics and appliances.
The domestic market in China is rapidly developing, showing every indication of becoming, within as little as another generation, at least as important as the United States as a mass market for global suppliers of everything from computers, cell phones, and other electronic goods to automobiles, refrigerators and other consumer durables. China is already at least as important as the United States in terms of incremental growth in imports.
The Made-In-China world we live exists mainly thanks to the manufacturing plants on the mainland, that take advantage of low wages and high productivity (very high rates of exploitation) and a substantial percentage of China's exports are the fruits of foreign firm production in China (rather than indigenous Chinese firms).
China-"the world's sweatshop" has long been lusted after by multinationals eager to gain customers in the world's most populous domestic economy and to exploit China's natural resources and relatively low cost (and abundant) workforce.
In a world where China's emergence as a major base for foreign firms to assemble manufactured goods;
• Where its influence over the free flow of capital, goods and executive talent across the globe is rocking the delicate balance between economic and military carrot and sticks.
• Where ever-closer political ties have blurred the lines between friend and foe.
• Where North American corporations are willing to sacrifice manufacturing jobs, technology and military security in pursuit of quick profits.
• Where multinational affiliates, these outposts of American capitalism are used by the Chinese to manufacture products exported back to the US thereby creating a trade imbalance.
One begins to wonder the role of China in the North American economy is it one of a ‘strategic competitor’ or is it one of a ‘strategic partner’. Bureaucrats and capitalists on both sides of the mutually incompatible social systems are counter posed to the working class of the world. Be it the world's capitalist countries or the degenerating workers states they outsource to.
East Asian efforts to penetrate the North American industry, to gather innovative technology and sensitive business information, have made headlines in the past. Today the world is changing before our very eyes. Some old rivalries are fading while others are coming to the forefront. Today's friend may become tomorrow enemy and visa versa. This is especially true in the rapidly changing world of shifting political alliances and changing boundaries for economic competition.
Neither China nor North America will ever be a paradise for workers. But workers, like institutional investors, must have the confidence in financial institutions, stock markets and government regulators for an economy to grow.
China is an economy undergoing rapid transformation. Its rapid growth has brought great opportunities and challenges—both for China and for the rest of the world. Some producers see Chinese competition as a threat. They worry about losing market share, about the impact on their markets from highly competitive Chinese exports. That's as familiar a refrain as it is an understandable one.
But China's growth has brought immense new opportunities for exporters—of primary commodities, of manufacturing inputs and of finished goods. China is contributing to the growth of world trade, not displacing it from elsewhere.
And competition from Chinese exports has benefited consumers across the world as well. Let us not forget that competition is one of the great benefits that freer trade brings, even when it forces some painful restructuring for those firms unused to it.
But China, too, is undergoing major and sometimes painful restructuring. It is a large and populous country. It has a cumbersome and inefficient bureaucracy, especially at the local level and in state-owned enterprises. Many of its citizens still live in abject poverty, and the gap between rich and poor has widened. It faces enormous demographic challenges as its population ages rapidly over the next few decades. Its banking system is saddled with bad debts that will, ultimately, have to be written off.
Chinese policymakers are seeking to maintain economic growth at levels that can have an impact on poverty while avoiding inflationary pressures that would ultimately hamper growth. And they are often relying on policy instruments that are at best unreliable in what is increasingly functioning like a market economy.
The challenges for China are not new, of course. The transition we are witnessing today started more than two decades ago. Adjustment is a relatively slow process even in small simple economies—and China is neither small nor simple.
What has changed is the extent to which all our economic fortunes are now linked with those of China. Its sheer size and its dynamism make it increasingly important for global economic growth. With Japan's economy largely stagnant for much of the 1990s, China played a crucial part in sustaining and helping to fuel Asian economic growth. With European growth still lackluster, the opportunities offered by Chinese growth are increasingly important for North America. It is in all our interests that the Chinese economic miracle is sustained.
Well, China is wide awake today, economically and strategically. The fastest growing region on the global landscape with an economy that came out unscathed out of the East-Asian Currency Crisis and the SARS epidemic just to bolster its place as the 6th largest GDP in the world. As of 2003, China was the world’s second largest economy—only surpassed by the U.S.—and had the highest growth rate of any major country. And not to mention an open arm welcome into the WTO General Council with a makeover from the World's Factory as the World's Market.
What baffles North American Economists the most is the Chinese economic engagement came with a learning curve so steep its continuing development poses a threat to them? China challenging North America's strong holds of industry & manufacturing comes with a lot of political ‘shock’ and wee bit of economic ‘awe’.
China’s economy opening up to the outside world worries those who fear that country’s huge pool of low-cost labor will drain jobs from the North American shores, and less expensive goods will spark trade problems. China’s untapped market present huge opportunities for North American businesses that would surely outweigh any loss of jobs, but the sort of jobs that had left to China a long time ago were the low-wage, low-skill jobs. Will the day when higher-wage, high-skill jobs are outsourced to China mark the epic struggle pitting the American eagle and the Chinese dragon?
There is a distinction to be made between deepening economic ties, fostering multinational trade and global manipulation by companies for their own vested interests. Outsourcing might be distressing to the system prevailing, unwilling to accept the pace of change. But unlike ever before, North America's impotency to produce timely innovative cutting-edge technologies, ideas and industries is hurting its image.
The real question is how many consumers of the 'Welfare Capitalist Economy' actually see the effects of 'Neo-Imperialist Globalization'.
The achievements on the economic plane of life in North America outstrip progress on the political plane to such an extent that economics and politics have lost their synchronicity. The flattening of the global economic playing field, in cohesion with a bastardized global political plane leaves a fertile ground for the gutters of the world to pool together.
Capitalist ruling classes in North America, have an attitude toward government economic policy that needs to be checked. This should ensure the operations of the Chinese marketers do not impede our ability to create jobs in North America and protect the working people of North America from the tremulous changes of supply and demand.
It should come as no surprise that China, of all the bureaucratized and degenerating workers states, has been able to make the greatest progress toward capitalist restoration. The strategic vision of the Chinese bureaucracy to align themselves with the neo-capitalist entrepreneurs of the globe are responsible in their getting rich and morphing into capitalists while the great majority in China, are suffering a decline in their living standards.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has embarked on a pragmatic and outward-looking program of economic development that focuses primarily on exports, foreign investment, technology and closer ties with the West.
The Chinese leadership clearly realizes that domestic development and sound trade expansion rely on stable international economic conditions. China is rapidly becoming the world's biggest "low-cost" manufacturer, flooding the global marketplace with relatively cheap electronics and appliances.
The domestic market in China is rapidly developing, showing every indication of becoming, within as little as another generation, at least as important as the United States as a mass market for global suppliers of everything from computers, cell phones, and other electronic goods to automobiles, refrigerators and other consumer durables. China is already at least as important as the United States in terms of incremental growth in imports.
The Made-In-China world we live exists mainly thanks to the manufacturing plants on the mainland, that take advantage of low wages and high productivity (very high rates of exploitation) and a substantial percentage of China's exports are the fruits of foreign firm production in China (rather than indigenous Chinese firms).
China-"the world's sweatshop" has long been lusted after by multinationals eager to gain customers in the world's most populous domestic economy and to exploit China's natural resources and relatively low cost (and abundant) workforce.
In a world where China's emergence as a major base for foreign firms to assemble manufactured goods;
• Where its influence over the free flow of capital, goods and executive talent across the globe is rocking the delicate balance between economic and military carrot and sticks.
• Where ever-closer political ties have blurred the lines between friend and foe.
• Where North American corporations are willing to sacrifice manufacturing jobs, technology and military security in pursuit of quick profits.
• Where multinational affiliates, these outposts of American capitalism are used by the Chinese to manufacture products exported back to the US thereby creating a trade imbalance.
One begins to wonder the role of China in the North American economy is it one of a ‘strategic competitor’ or is it one of a ‘strategic partner’. Bureaucrats and capitalists on both sides of the mutually incompatible social systems are counter posed to the working class of the world. Be it the world's capitalist countries or the degenerating workers states they outsource to.
East Asian efforts to penetrate the North American industry, to gather innovative technology and sensitive business information, have made headlines in the past. Today the world is changing before our very eyes. Some old rivalries are fading while others are coming to the forefront. Today's friend may become tomorrow enemy and visa versa. This is especially true in the rapidly changing world of shifting political alliances and changing boundaries for economic competition.
Neither China nor North America will ever be a paradise for workers. But workers, like institutional investors, must have the confidence in financial institutions, stock markets and government regulators for an economy to grow.
China is an economy undergoing rapid transformation. Its rapid growth has brought great opportunities and challenges—both for China and for the rest of the world. Some producers see Chinese competition as a threat. They worry about losing market share, about the impact on their markets from highly competitive Chinese exports. That's as familiar a refrain as it is an understandable one.
But China's growth has brought immense new opportunities for exporters—of primary commodities, of manufacturing inputs and of finished goods. China is contributing to the growth of world trade, not displacing it from elsewhere.
And competition from Chinese exports has benefited consumers across the world as well. Let us not forget that competition is one of the great benefits that freer trade brings, even when it forces some painful restructuring for those firms unused to it.
But China, too, is undergoing major and sometimes painful restructuring. It is a large and populous country. It has a cumbersome and inefficient bureaucracy, especially at the local level and in state-owned enterprises. Many of its citizens still live in abject poverty, and the gap between rich and poor has widened. It faces enormous demographic challenges as its population ages rapidly over the next few decades. Its banking system is saddled with bad debts that will, ultimately, have to be written off.
Chinese policymakers are seeking to maintain economic growth at levels that can have an impact on poverty while avoiding inflationary pressures that would ultimately hamper growth. And they are often relying on policy instruments that are at best unreliable in what is increasingly functioning like a market economy.
The challenges for China are not new, of course. The transition we are witnessing today started more than two decades ago. Adjustment is a relatively slow process even in small simple economies—and China is neither small nor simple.
What has changed is the extent to which all our economic fortunes are now linked with those of China. Its sheer size and its dynamism make it increasingly important for global economic growth. With Japan's economy largely stagnant for much of the 1990s, China played a crucial part in sustaining and helping to fuel Asian economic growth. With European growth still lackluster, the opportunities offered by Chinese growth are increasingly important for North America. It is in all our interests that the Chinese economic miracle is sustained.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Outsourcing
Outsourcing: a.k.a. Industrial prostitution - To whore out work to less fortunate, less informed, more vulnerable workers who will do the labor because they need the work, the money and the security of having a job.
If that's not what outsourcing is what is?
Outsourcing: Manufacturers cutting corners by exploiting workers on some other corner of the globe today for their own personal profits, reducing productions costs.
I thought that was what Imperialist conquests were all about. I thought those days were over. I thought the world was a better place today in comparison to the world described in my dilapidated old history books. I guess I was wrong to come oot of those classrooms feeling it was a better place we lived in today.
Its just too many people dont care to see through it all. Its just too many people intend to live the American pipe dream; to make it being in the capitalist heart land of the world but more often get hit by the realities of the Welfare capitalist economy that they live in. Factory workers are great ... they hardly ever save any money they blow it all away... in booze, food, mortgage. the service industry workers are even better they talk the talk ... but can hardly get anywhere close to walking the walk.
And with all those war monging inbred plaid clad bible thumping red necks, taking advantage of every immigrant that sets foot on the land, with all those political hang ups, socio-economic hiccups. What's it going to take to tear down these walls of mistrust... These walls of hatred .. these walls of racial prejudices, of religious hegimony, of social inequalities...
maybe a whole lotta love...
If that's not what outsourcing is what is?
Outsourcing: Manufacturers cutting corners by exploiting workers on some other corner of the globe today for their own personal profits, reducing productions costs.
I thought that was what Imperialist conquests were all about. I thought those days were over. I thought the world was a better place today in comparison to the world described in my dilapidated old history books. I guess I was wrong to come oot of those classrooms feeling it was a better place we lived in today.
Its just too many people dont care to see through it all. Its just too many people intend to live the American pipe dream; to make it being in the capitalist heart land of the world but more often get hit by the realities of the Welfare capitalist economy that they live in. Factory workers are great ... they hardly ever save any money they blow it all away... in booze, food, mortgage. the service industry workers are even better they talk the talk ... but can hardly get anywhere close to walking the walk.
And with all those war monging inbred plaid clad bible thumping red necks, taking advantage of every immigrant that sets foot on the land, with all those political hang ups, socio-economic hiccups. What's it going to take to tear down these walls of mistrust... These walls of hatred .. these walls of racial prejudices, of religious hegimony, of social inequalities...
maybe a whole lotta love...
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Why do Engineering Students Whine So Much ?
If there is a singular commonality in every technology course taught through out the Engineering College system it's this un-deviated classroom style from the following pattern:
1) Greet class.
2) Ask if there were any questions about the previous day's problem set.
3) If so, work out the problem in question on the chalkboard, without further explanation.
4) Repeat step 3) as needed.
5) Announce the pages in the textbook from which the next problem set would be derived.
6) Perform a sample problem from the new problem set.
7) Ask if anyone has any questions.
8) Give the problem set assignment.
9) Dismiss the class.
Going through the above described scenario for the past couple of semesters I have begun to feel like I am on a Star Trek episode. "Captain, I think I understand… these creatures communicate through multivariable calculus problems!"
Through the course of all the harried teaching I saw and experienced that took place there would be the rare occasion where actually the occasional concept would be explained. But for most of the time it's a Whine and Cheese affair. These complaints that I speak of, well are they really serious or are they more of a routine need to vent, that's for you to decide...
"If you get a 60% below on ANY quiz," You would get the "YOU ARE NOT STUDYING HARD ENOUGH." remarks. I have wondered what would happen if you got a 30% on a quiz. Were you branded forever? Expelled? Excommunicated?
The social-life-killing workload is the stuff geeky nerd humor among the 3rd year technology students is comprised of. Often heard slogans include, “Sleep is for the weak!" & "Your underwear has two sides."
First-Year students rarely pose questions that challenge teachers enough. They bail out before they get a chance to learn to think. I don’t blame them; instructors need to re-evaluate how they are teaching students because the stress is showing in students today. Somebody's got to have a look at their blended families, their IM hot wired SNAFU life styles. Students today are consumers and technology education must change to meet that reality.
Health Sciences & Business have changed the way they work with students, using problem based approaches, putting students into small groups where they have to decide what they need to know and how they should solve a problem. That’s the way technology works in the real world, but the college system has been slow to embrace these strategies probably because they require a lot of skill on the part of faculty.
Compose in your mind a montage of quizzes covered in red ink, classes wasted in the stupor of incomprehension, and frowning instructors muttering strange spells in their eerie scientific jargon. And as time passes there grows a void between you and the instructor that seems increasingly unbridgeable as the days go by.
The Technology streams regularly get good students and if they are not successful, it can’t be entirely their fault. It might just be that faculty have to move out of “we’ve covered it; it’s done” operating model to a “knowing how it is that students actually learn their technology courses approach.” I guess it’s time for the college to tell faculty members that they need training in speech.
I honestly believe there are a finite number of smart people who enroll into Mohawk College's Technology Programs who chose this as a viable career option. But if we are to live up to the provincial need for technically qualified people of a certain stature it's high time we find a way to retain students smart enough to do the math and motivated enough to at least take a bite at the technology apple, but who are turned off by the overwhelming coursework, low grades, and abysmal teaching.
Find a way to teach engineering technology to verbally oriented students who can't learn math by sense of smell. Demand from (and give to) students an actual mastery of the material, rather than relying on bogus on-the-curve pseudo-grades that hinge upon the amount of credit a fatigued instructor wants to dole out. Use textbooks that are more than just glorified problem set manuals. Give grades that will make engineering technology graduates get to be competitive in a grade-inflated environment.
None of these things will happen, of course. Our professors are perfectly happy weeding out undesirables with absurd boot-camp courses that conceal the inability of said professors to communicate with words. Fewer students will pursue engineering technology majors, and Canada will grow ever more reliant upon foreign brainpower to design our scientific and manufacturing endeavors.
1) Greet class.
2) Ask if there were any questions about the previous day's problem set.
3) If so, work out the problem in question on the chalkboard, without further explanation.
4) Repeat step 3) as needed.
5) Announce the pages in the textbook from which the next problem set would be derived.
6) Perform a sample problem from the new problem set.
7) Ask if anyone has any questions.
8) Give the problem set assignment.
9) Dismiss the class.
Going through the above described scenario for the past couple of semesters I have begun to feel like I am on a Star Trek episode. "Captain, I think I understand… these creatures communicate through multivariable calculus problems!"
Through the course of all the harried teaching I saw and experienced that took place there would be the rare occasion where actually the occasional concept would be explained. But for most of the time it's a Whine and Cheese affair. These complaints that I speak of, well are they really serious or are they more of a routine need to vent, that's for you to decide...
"If you get a 60% below on ANY quiz," You would get the "YOU ARE NOT STUDYING HARD ENOUGH." remarks. I have wondered what would happen if you got a 30% on a quiz. Were you branded forever? Expelled? Excommunicated?
The social-life-killing workload is the stuff geeky nerd humor among the 3rd year technology students is comprised of. Often heard slogans include, “Sleep is for the weak!" & "Your underwear has two sides."
First-Year students rarely pose questions that challenge teachers enough. They bail out before they get a chance to learn to think. I don’t blame them; instructors need to re-evaluate how they are teaching students because the stress is showing in students today. Somebody's got to have a look at their blended families, their IM hot wired SNAFU life styles. Students today are consumers and technology education must change to meet that reality.
Health Sciences & Business have changed the way they work with students, using problem based approaches, putting students into small groups where they have to decide what they need to know and how they should solve a problem. That’s the way technology works in the real world, but the college system has been slow to embrace these strategies probably because they require a lot of skill on the part of faculty.
Compose in your mind a montage of quizzes covered in red ink, classes wasted in the stupor of incomprehension, and frowning instructors muttering strange spells in their eerie scientific jargon. And as time passes there grows a void between you and the instructor that seems increasingly unbridgeable as the days go by.
The Technology streams regularly get good students and if they are not successful, it can’t be entirely their fault. It might just be that faculty have to move out of “we’ve covered it; it’s done” operating model to a “knowing how it is that students actually learn their technology courses approach.” I guess it’s time for the college to tell faculty members that they need training in speech.
I honestly believe there are a finite number of smart people who enroll into Mohawk College's Technology Programs who chose this as a viable career option. But if we are to live up to the provincial need for technically qualified people of a certain stature it's high time we find a way to retain students smart enough to do the math and motivated enough to at least take a bite at the technology apple, but who are turned off by the overwhelming coursework, low grades, and abysmal teaching.
Find a way to teach engineering technology to verbally oriented students who can't learn math by sense of smell. Demand from (and give to) students an actual mastery of the material, rather than relying on bogus on-the-curve pseudo-grades that hinge upon the amount of credit a fatigued instructor wants to dole out. Use textbooks that are more than just glorified problem set manuals. Give grades that will make engineering technology graduates get to be competitive in a grade-inflated environment.
None of these things will happen, of course. Our professors are perfectly happy weeding out undesirables with absurd boot-camp courses that conceal the inability of said professors to communicate with words. Fewer students will pursue engineering technology majors, and Canada will grow ever more reliant upon foreign brainpower to design our scientific and manufacturing endeavors.
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