August Torngren Wartin

18%

2012-02-17T01:37:00.001+01:00

Snart två år sedan senaste uppdateringen, men om det är någon som fortfarande läser denna blogg, notera att JL Partnerships 76000 anställda mitt under en ekonomisk kris erhöll två månadslöner i bonus - detta eftersom de äger företaget tillsammans.

Kuba och Mondragon - Kan arbetarkooperativ ersätta statssocialismen?

2010-08-09T17:50:00.059+02:00

Det har under de senaste dagarna rapporterats om att den statssocialistiska diktaturen på Kuba försiktigt kommer att börja släppa sitt järnhårda grepp om landets näringsliv i ett försök att effektivisera ekonomin. The New York Times talar om reformer i marknadsekonomisk riktning där överflödiga statsanställda ska bli privata entreprenörer, och i DN kan vi läsa att den kubanska ''regeringen har gått med på att tillåta olika former av privat företagsamhet och andra alternativ för arbetare som förlorar sina jobb''.

Det är ett positivt besked att Kubas (även med kommunistiska mått mätt) extremt ineffektiva planekonomiska system reformeras. Men för den som inte tycker att exempelvis Kinas korrupta (men ekonomiskt framgångsrika) statskapitalism är en särskilt tilltalande modell för Kuba att kopiera finns det en del tecken på att Castro är ute efter en mer socialt ansvarstagande typ av ''marknadsekonomi'' än den kinesiska. Det gäller till exempel ett potentiellt medarbetarägande av kubanska företag.

Detta sätt att organisera företag är kanske som mest utvecklat i det personalägda och demokratiskt styrda baskiska Corporación Mondragon - Spaniens sjunde största företagsgrupp, med ca hundratusen anställda, och tillverkare av allt från industrirobotar till kökselektronik. Representanter för Mondragon har redan varit på Kuba för att diskutera möjligheterna för ett större kooperativt ägande på ön:

18 Juni, 2010, kunde vi t.ex. läsa följande på CBS News hemsida:

"This is one of the most critical moments we have had," said Omar Everleny, researcher at the University of Havana's Center for Study of the Cuban Economy in a press briefing. However, the crisis, he said, has prompted the most theoretical discussion ever about what is going to happen in Cuba.

[...]

Everleny further revealed that representatives of the Spanish corporation Mondragon are in Cuba this week holding meetings with City of Havana officials as Cuba studies the possibility of cooperative ownership, part of its reexamination of property rights.

The Mondragon Corporation is a federation of worker cooperatives and is the seventh largest Spanish company in terms of turnover and leading business group in the Basque Country, employing 92,773 in 256 companies by the end of 2008.

The Government is already dabbling with cooperatives in small scale services. Beauty parlors and barber shops have been turned over to their workers in the last year. Typical is a small shop on 44th Street in the Playa neighborhood of Havana. The locale and all the modest equipment are now the property of the two hairdressers and one manicurist working there. As customers show up for their haircut, Yamila explains that she is now working for herself and has raised the cost of a cut from 3 pesos to 20. So far all her customers are willing to pay the new rate and, she says, wish her well.

Och följande, för er som kan spanska, cirkulerade på kubanska dissidentbloggar under juni månad:

El gobierno recurre a las cooperativas como forma de descentralizar la economía, manteniéndola dentro del sistema socialista junto con la entrega paulatina al sector privado de servicios minoristas, informó ANSA.

La Corporación Mondragón, de España, líder mundial en cooperativismo, acudió al llamado del gobierno cubano para asesorarlo en la instauración de cooperativas de forma generalizada, dijo a ANSA un economista que participó la semana pasada en la Semana Social Católica, organizada por la Iglesia local.

Representantes de esta corporación estuvieron recientemente en el país asesorando a autoridades económicas cubanas.

En la Isla, donde existen cooperativas agropecuarias, comenzaron a crearse brigadas de esta naturaleza para la construcción de viviendas, donde los integrantes de esas organizaciones son accionistas de la compañía.

Las cooperativas, agregó, podrían también tomar a su cargo la comercialización de los productos agrícolas, actualmente en manos del Estado, y contribuirían a la descentralización de la economía, "respetando el carácter socialista del país", y mejorarían la eficiencia en el trabajo.

Además, dijo, ayudarían a resolver el problema del "exceso" de un millón de empleados estatales, según dijo en abril el general Raúl Castro.

Jag har personligen även under min tid i Argentina, vid en ekonomisk federation för arbetarägda företag (Red Grafica Cooperativa), redan för ca sex månader sedan fått berättat för mig av företagsekonomen Leandro Miret (som har studerat vid Mondragon), att ekonomer från det baskiska företaget varit på Kuba för att lära ut kooperativt entreprenörskap till kubanerna.

Det tycks alltså finnas en chans att personalägande enligt Mondragons modell kan ingå i Raul Castros plan för att vända Kubas ekonomiska stagnation.

Att Kubas regering verkar ha valt att studera just Mondragons modell kan tyckas särskilt trevligt, med tanke på Mondragons finurliga lösningar på några av personalägandets klassiska problem.* Ett exempel på detta är kooperativens så kallade interna individuella konton (ICAs) som bland annat löser det så kallade ''horizon''-problemet (att olika arbetare har olika incitament att återinvestera vinst i sitt kooperativ beroende på hur länge de tänker stanna i företaget) som man ofta stött på i den ekonomiska litteraturen kring arbetarägande. En annan viktig komponent i Mondragons framgångar är dess bank Caja Laboral.

Det existerar sedan tidigare jordbrukskooperativ på Kuba. Och redan tidigare har vi, som nämns i ett av citaten ovan, kunnat läsa om kooperativt experimenterande med frisersalonger på ön.

Skeptiker skulle emellertid förmodligen fråga sig vilket intresse den kommunistiska parti- och militäreliten skulle ha av att genomföra en kooperativisering av landets näringsliv under en eventuell övergång till marknadsekonomi. När dollarna väl börjat flöda i den kommunistiska partibyråkratin är det lätt att tänka sig att få längre kommer att bry sig om Mondragon.

*Det finns dock ett ''problem'' som just Mondragon ännu inte helt lyckats lösa (trots beslut om ''kooperativisering'' av detaljhandelskedjan Eroski, se nedan). Arbetarägda företag (arbetarkooperativ etc.) tenderar i ''kapitalistiska'' ekonomier att på sikt ofta sluta vara just arbetarägda företag, då de ursprungliga medlemmarna kan börja ta in vanliga anställda utan att erbjuda dem medlemskap, och vid pensionering omvandlar företaget till ett vanligt aktiebolag. Detta problem kan emellertid delvis lösas genom lagstiftning eller, som man ofta gjort i England, genom att utrusta en stiftelse med tillräcklig rösstyrka för att förhindra utförsäljningen av företaget till utomstående. På så sätt förblir företaget arbetarägt (och demokratiskt styrt).

(Den 27 Oktober 2009 kunde vi också läsa följande om ett nytt samarbete mellan Mondragon och Nordamerikas största industrifackförbund:

The United Steelworkers (USW) and MONDRAGON Internacional, S.A. today announced a framework agreement for collaboration in establishing MONDRAGON cooperatives in the manufacturing sector within the United States and Canada. The USW and MONDRAGON will work to establish manufacturing cooperatives that adapt collective bargaining principles to the MONDRAGON worker ownership model of “one worker, one vote.

Mondragon håller dessutom just nu på att planera och genomföra en kooperativiseringsprocess (där icke-medlemmar ska göras till medlemmar) bland flera av företagets dotterbolag, då de under de senaste åren (p.g.a snabb expansion) tagit in en stor del vanliga anställda.)

Wilkinson ger Norberg, Nordling med flera svar på tal

2010-02-15T00:54:00.019+01:00

Richard Wilkinson och Kate Picketts bok The Spirit level (på svenska Jämlikhetsanden) blir, inte helt oväntat, hårt kritiserad på allsköns (ny)liberala bloggar. Tex. Johan Norberg kritiserar bokens vetenskapliga metoder och slutsatser här och Danne Nordling påstår sig ha funnit ett underligt ''fel'' i boken. Jag vidarebefordrade den del av kritiken jag tyckte var berättigad till Wilkinson själv via mail. Här publicerar jag, med Richards tillåtelse, hans svar:

Dear August, there are lots of different ways of measuring income distribution and lots of difference income concepts over which you can measure inequality. As we said in the book, we averaged three years of figures published by the UN which were basically the same as the ones published by the World Bank. They came originally from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) which was set up to help produce internationally comparable figures. In our use of data we have an absolute rule that we take the data as published in our source. If we started to pick and choose data points that would be an important potential source of bias. As an example, look at figure 6.4 showing infant mortality. We included Singapore even though we cannot believe it has the lowest infant mortality in the world and in strongly detracts from the relationship with inequality.

I have since become aware that OECD quote very different figures for Japan which come from a different Japanese income survey from the other one, but I have not found out what the difference is in what the two surveys measure. However, my impression is that the OECD figures have not been through the same careful processing to maximise international comparability as those on LIS. But this is not a major problem for our thesis. If you take Japan out of our index graph (the one where we put al the health and social problems together), or put Japan almost anywhere else, there is still a strong relation between inequality and our index of health and social problems.

Australian research on trends in income inequality: As I have often said, there is a background rate of improvement in life expectancy - we gain two or three years with every decade that passes and in most developed countries that has been going on for over 100 years and there are no adequate explanations of it - though I am sure it used to be driven substantially be the long term (not short term) effects of economic growth. The forces behind this are not only unknown, but have changed. Since about 1975 death rates have been falling at older ages where little progress had previously been made. Time trends will be powerfully effected by the background rate of improvement, but the fact that there are now about 200 studies looking at health in relation to inequality shows that inequality must be a factor yet it cannot be anything like the most important factor. The life expectancy and inequality relationships in our book are one of the weaker ones we discuss, and what inequality seems to do is to make small differences in the background rate of improvement in life expectancy enjoyed by almost all rich countries. To correlate century long changes over time would mean controlling for the unknown background rate of change. And what the residual would then be correlated with are basically two periods of change. Inequality was high in most of the English speaking countries until about 1930, it then fell almost continuously till sometime in the 1970s and started rising again. In doing time series analysis, no one knows what lag periods to use: they should probably be different for every cause of death and every age group: we do know for example that health in later life is strongly influenced by early childhood experience. The fact that most older people dying now were probably born in a period of increasing equality yet die in a period of increasing inequality points to some of the difficulties in doing time series.

I don't have any doubt that Angus Deaton is wrong about the issue being poverty. Many studies have controlled not only for poverty, but also the effect of individual incomes across society. And absolute poverty could never explain why the effects of inequality go all the way across society. Nor could they exlpain the total lack of relation between most of our outcomes and Gross National Income per head among the richaest countries - see for instance Figures 1.1 and 1.3.

We will have to spend too much time in the future defending our thesis from fairly simple criticism even though we only shows what many people have believed for hundreds of years is true.

I am attaching a paper - a commentary - on the difficulty of understanding what is driving the long term improvement in health. You will understand that I cannot spare enough time to answer too many individual questions.

With best wishes, Richard

Och angående Tino
Sanandajis påstående att inequality is positively correlated with life expectancy då man använder sig av OECDs Gini-statistik, skriver Wilkinson följande:

Dear August, - just to add to what I said earlier, this morning we looked at our Index of Health and Social Problems in relation to the OECD Ginis you mentioned. The correlation is only a little weaker - close to 0.7 - and almost entirely because Japan is an outlier on these figures. You might like to look at the Powerpoint slide of that relationship which I have attached. We will add something on this to our FAQs. Add it to your blog etc if you want, but the most important thing is that the OECD figs do not make much difference to the correlation - except for Japan.
best, Richard

Wilkinsons nya Gini-index (Index of health and social problems in relation to inequality):

UPDATE:
Wilkinson svarar kort på Tinos specifika kommentarer kring life expectancy och inequality (se tex. kommentarsfältet till detta blogginlägg):

Sorry - far to busy to follow up this stuff. I know the right will be doing everything to get rid of our material but we don't have time for blogs etc now. I notice country names are not given and assume he has included countries which are not among the richest in the world and so should control for GNP before looking at inequality. Should also try looking at mortality among infants and working age populations.
best, Richard

UPDATE 2:

Wilkinson ger ett mer utförligt svar på Tinos gini-index:

Dear August,

These problems look serious only to the uninitiated, unaware of the vast literature. There are now about 200 peer reviewed analyses of the relation between various measures of health and inequality in different settings (see attached review). There have been times in the past where, because of rapid changes in income distribution, cross-sectional relationships have temporarily disappeared only to reappear when the new levels of inequality have had time to work their way through to affect culture and then health. As I said, death rates at older ages which now dominate life expectancy, are likely to be influenced by inequality throughout life. Although I started off working on health in relation to inequality, we now know that health is more weakly related to inequality than many of the other outcomes we look at.

Kate has quickly run through our data to see how the outcomes relate to the OECD inequality figures (see attached file). There are a few changes, some stronger, some weaker, but the vast majority much as before - see attached table. Inevitably things change, there are lag periods and there are different measures of income and income distribution. She has also included correlations for some of the relationships in question using the new inequality measures in the UN Human Dev Rpt 2009.

Richard Wilkinson

Nya Gini-korrelationer:

UPDATE 3:

Wilkinsons svarar på Tinos senaste inlägg där det hävdas att Wilkinson nu ''erkänt'' att ''there is no statistically significant relationship between life expectancy and inequality'':

You are clutching at straws. You forget the 200 papers on inequality and health covering rich and poor countries, regions of Russia and China, S. America, the analyses of the 50 US states, plus the reasons why you might sometimes loose a simply cross-sectional relationship (to the naive delight of critics) and our knowledge of life-long causal mechanisms.

You might also like to read a recent meta-analysis of multilevel models of the relation between income distribution and health which covered individual data on 60 million people. With it I attach our editorial comment - Both from the British Medical Journal.

I cannot spare the time to continue with this.

Här har jag, för den intresserade, laddat upp alla filer (index etc.) som Wilkinson bifogade i sina mail.

''Smått och gott'' ur Chomskys och min mail-korrespondens

2010-02-12T19:50:00.000+01:00

Jag: I remember that you, in some speech about Gaza, said something about the fact that Israel has been regarded as part of the defence of the ruling clerics against their own populations in the undemocratic Arab countries. What did you mean by that?

Noam: I've written a lot about it. In brief, the US-Israel relation was established in its present form after Israel's destruction of Nasser and secular Arab nationalism, the great enemy of the US and UK, which were strongly supporting radical Islamic fundamentalist Saudi Arabia. After that Israel was assigned the role of one of the "cops on the beat" (in Nixon administration terminology) protecting the leadership of the Islamic dictators of the oil states, against independent forces, including their own populations. The other "cops" were Iran (under the Shah, Turkey, and Pakistan, all non-Arab. The system developed since under basically the same assumptions, with changes as circumstances changed. Israel too supported radical Islamic fundamentalism as a weapon against the secular PLO.

Jag: You have said, correct me if I'm wrong, that the most important enemies of governments (states?) are their own populations (and other states/governments?). But at the same time you seem to be in favor of social democratic reforms like those we have had in sweden (which increases the power/influence of the government), and you say that the people can influence the government in at least some way. How do you combine these ways of thinking, and do you make a distinction between the public sector and the government/state (because you seem to want to expand the public sector but at the same time reduce the power of the government)?

Noam: In existing societies, there are several (linked) centers of powers, primarily the corporate sector and the government. The corporate sector is internally totalitarian, virtually unaccountable to the public, and dedicated to increasing profit and market share (by law). The government is partially accountable to the public, and provides the only means, at present, to defend the public from the predatory corporate sector and the ravages of the market. Therefore, in existing societies, anyone who cares about people and their fate will support social democratic reforms. In a more free and just society these centers of power would wither, and in my view at least, should disappear into a libertarian socialist system.

Jag: You said that the private corporate sector is ''virtually unaccountable to the public''. How much do you think that protest (for example againts sweatshops) can modify the way a private corporation acts? Of course they want to maintain some kind of moral image so that they don't loose consumers, but how far do you think that popular protest can modify how they act?

Noam: That's not a matter of accountability. Even totalitarian dictators respond to popular pressures. That's why, for example, Nazi Germany had to fight a "guns and butter" war, which set them back badly according to Speer. There's no general answer to when it works. Depends on the circumstances, and how the protests are carried out. Sure it can modify how they act. There are plenty of examples.

Jag: I have to ask which popular movement/government/country that you have visited/studied during your life that you think has been closests to create a sustainable and fair society when it comes to social and economical structures? Maybe a stupid or impossible question to answer, but I'll ask it anyway.

Noam: At the moment, the Nordic societies are as close as any in most respects, but not in all. Thus the US is well in the lead in protecting such fundamental rights as freedom of speech (since the 1960s). Bolivia and Brazil are in the lead in having significant popular mass movements. And there are other dimensions.

Jag: You talk a lot about Obama campaign funding and that the financial institutions contributed with the bulk of his funding in the presidential election. People often say that small donations from ordinary people constituted the majority of his funding. Is that not true?

Noam: People also say that the stock market is democratic because so many people have a few dollars in pension funds, etc., even though ownership is very highly concentrated, and it is the concentration that determines corporate behavior. Same with Obama. It's hard to get exact numbers, because there are all sorts of ways for corporations to "bundle" individual contributions. But the investigations that have been carried out show that his funding was concentrated in financial institutions. It also seems pretty clear that that high concentration of funding was responsible for shifting the swing states to him at the end of the campaign.

Jag: Am I allowed to ask you how many mails you read per day? Actually I also have one other very, very short question about Iraq: According to people like Jeremy Scahill, who talked on swedish radio a month ago, it seems like Obama wants to ''replace'' the US soldiers in Iraq with private contractors. Do you think they could actually ''replace'' a great part (all?) of the US soldiers in this way and make the statistics over US soldiers there look better?

Noam: Mail usually takes 6-7 hours a day, usually a night. Scahill is very accurate on these matters. It's quite natural. Imperial powers generally use mercenaries, not their own troops: the French Foreign Legion, the Gurkhas, etc. The "contractors" are in fact mercenaries, and are often referred to by that term. You can learn more from Scahill's book about Blackwater.

Annat smått och gott från korrespondensen:

Om Venezuelas president Hugo Chavez ‘’nedstängning’’ av oppositionens tv-kanal RCTV (hans uteblivna förnyande av kanalens licens), fem år efter att kanalen aktivt deltagit i en kortlivad militärkupp mot Chavez demokratiskt valda regering: ‘’On RCTV, how many letters have you written to people who condemned the failure to renew their license (as I did) but failed to mention that if it had happened in the US, they (RCTV) would have been lined up before firing squads?’’

Chomsky om Venezuela under Chavez: ’’Without deep investigation, my impression is roughly like those of Wilpert, Hahnel, and others who have investigated carefully: there are promising initiatives, uncontroversial success in reducing poverty and other achievements, uncontroversial very high popular support up to at least a year ago, a serious threat of caudillism, and a fundamental flaw in that changes are coming from above rather than from below, as in Bolivia, which is why I write about Bolivia, not Venezuela.’’

Chomsky om argumentet att Israel är den enda demokratin i regionen som ett försvar för dess brott: ‘’It would be completely irrelevant if true. The US was far more democratic than Vietnam. Can anyone but a lunatic offer that as a justification for the US attack and its consequences? Hitler came to power democratically, and was probably the most popular leader in German history, and would have easily won an election, until the war began to go sour. Does that justify the Holocaust? That aside, the claim is dubious. Palestine had a free and fair election, carefully monitored, in January 2006, to which the US-Israel responded instantly by punishing the population severely for voting "the wrong way," with the EU toddling along politely behind, as usual.’’

Om baskiska Mondragon: ‘’I'm familiar with Mondragon, and think it is important. But it is a very restricted alternative to capitalism. It is worker owned (like United Airlines), but not worker-managed. The traditional libertarian left (Council Communists, anarchosyndicalists, Institute for Workers Control, etc.) were committed to worker self-management, and rightly I think. Worker self-management is very different from electing managers and then following their decisions. There's a substantial literature on this, including what I referred to. ’’

Chomsky om att han inte fick några frågor av svenska journalister om det egna landets brott när han var i på besök i Sverige (något han däremot fick av kubanska journalister när han besökte Kuba och talade i diktaturens statligt kontrollerade medier): ''Similarly, if I'd been asked in Sweden what I thought about Sweden's criminal record in East Timor, I would have answered. I did have a press conference in Sweden, and then a separate interview with DN (because they were too high and mighty, they explained, to attend a joint press conference). Nothing about Sweden came up, as far as I know, I suppose because unlike Cuba, they don't want their crimes discussed -- or worse, maybe don't even know about them. I might add that I was rather surprised by the quality and subordination to power of these interviews, but I've never written about it.''

Del 2:

Jag: You have said (at least that was my interpretation) that Obama does more or less the same thing as would Bush have done if he would be sitting for a third term (his second term you call more moderate than his first). I know that Obama don't do much different yet and that for example his Latin American policies are not very different from Bushs so far. But do you think that Bush also would have done the things that Obama want to do, like with healthcare and Guantanamo etc?

Noam: On Gitmo, Bush would probably have done the same thing. It was an embarrassment, and useless. However, it's worth noting that Obama is going even beyond Bush in trying to implement Gitmo procedures. Thus, the Supreme Court determined that the Gitmo prisoners had habeas corpus rights. Obama is now trying to overturn a judgment by a hard-line Bush appointee that the ruling applies to other US secret prisons, Bagram in particular.

On health care, there is a really serious problem, recognized by the business world. They all realize that the hopelessly inefficient US privatized system is going to tank the economy. The issue they face is how to patch it together without cutting out or severely regulating the private insurance companies. It's likely that Bush and Obama would have taken slightly different approaches to this. It's worth noting that back in August, Business Week had a front-cover story on how the insurance companies were exulting that already won -- though, of course, no victory is ever enough.

Jag: What do you think will happen with the oil reserves of Iraq in the future?

Noam: The US has been trying to gain privileged access (and as late as Nov 2007, that was an official US demand), but the Iraqi government has been much more nationalistic than expected, in other respects too, and has been offering contracts more widely. It's an ongoing struggle, with many facets. You may have noticed the recent discovery that one of the leading liberal advisers, Peter Galbraith, who has been pushing for federalization, has a significant financial interest in Kurdish producers that would benefit greatly from this outcome. It's a very shady business and always has been, and there's sure to be endless corruption and uncertain outcomes.

Jag: Also I wanted to ask what you thought of the jugoslav ''market socialism'' under Tito (the economic and social structures)?

Noam: Long story. It had some good aspects, but it was within a totalitarian state system, which limited what could be achieved.

Jag: And the use of private contractors, or mercenaries, is that something new or have the US always done that?

Noam: Every imperial system does that in one or another way. The US is to an unusual extent a business-run society, so use of contractor/mercenaries is more developed. More so now than in the past, because the population doesn't support the large-scale warmaking so it has to be hidden.

Jag: Do you think that the European union can be a positive force in the world in some way? Do you think it's better (for the world) that the states work ''together'' in a union like the EU than separated?

Noam: Depends what they are working for, and how they are doing it. In the case of the EU, I can't see how to draw a simple judgment. Many dimensions, many possibilities.

Om att Venezuela enligt vissa är på väg att bli ett kommunistiskt land (för att de genomför jordreform och förstatliganden av delar av industrin etc.): ‘’Is Chile a communist country? Its economy is based on a nationalized copper industry. We call Chile the model of the free market. … The US does not support social reforms because of their value, but in terms of whether they are carried out by clients (good) or by those who seek an independent path (bad). The term "communist," often used just as a term of abuse, has little meaning. Thus Russia is called "communist," though it didn't even carry out such limited steps as land reform -- in fact, as I've discussed elsewhere, when Lenin and Trotsky took over they quickly dismantled the socialist and popular institutions of the revolutionary period.’’

Om kubanska Castro-regimens fängslande av dissidenter: ''When I signed petitions protesting the imprisonment of the dissidents, I was approached by Havana radio to comment, and I did, very critically. It was broadcast. When I happened to visit Cuba later for an international conference of Latin American scholars that was meeting there, I was invited to appear on the main TV discussion program, with several others. I was again asked about the imprisonment, and said the same things. It was broadcast. I had a public meeting in downtown Havana, outdoors, chaired by Ricardo Alarcon, again was asked, again responded.

That is quite unlike the US, or probably Sweden. For example, in the US I have the honor of being designated, in print, as the one person who will never be allowed on the lead program of NPR, the left-liberal extreme of US journalism. I don't recall being asked any question about Sweden when I was interviewed there at a conference of editors or by DN.

It should also be added that in Western countries the dissidents might well have been arrested. Suppose that Sweden was under severe attack by some enormous superpower X, and it was discovered that dissidents were funded by X and regularly communicating with X's embassy. Would they have received flowers and chocolate?

…

That they had regular contact with the US Embassy there is no doubt, and there's little doubt that there was financial support too. But let's just take the uncontroversial part. Suppose that the Iran were some immense superpower, and the US was dwarfed by Iran, which had been carrying out terror and economic warfare for half a century to try to punish the US population enough so that they'd overthrow their government. Suppose that dissidents in the US were in contact with the Iranian interests section in Washington (imagining that that would even exist). What would you expect the reaction to be?

Again, that doesn't excuse the repression, but unless Westerners can escape the iron grip of imperial mentality, it'll be really hard to discuss these issues seriously.''

Del 3:

Chomsky om statens viktiga roll i teknologisk utveckling etc:
I've discussed it often in print, citing many sources. Here's a footnote from Failed States. World Orders Old and New Rogue States and Turning the Tide are earlier books of mine. There's a lot more. These matters are discussed in considerable detail in history of technology, and also be economic historians. All of these studies understate the reality. E.g., the basic research done in university labs, typically government funded, is rarely considered.

Another useful take on the matter is Gar Alperovitz's Unjust Desserts, discussing how even innovations are based extensively on shared knowledge and understanding, to which there have been a vast number of contributors.

-------------------

On the state role (often military) in US economic development, see Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box (Cambridge, 1982); John Tirman, ed., The Militarization of High Technology (Ballinger, 1984); Merritt Roe Smith, ed., Military Enterprise and Technological Change (MIT, 1985); Richard Nelson, ed., National Innovation Systems (Oxford, 1993); Richard DuBoff, Accumulation and Power (M. E. Sharpe, 1989); and numerous specialist studies. Also World Orders Old and New, chap. 2, and sources cited. Apparent exceptions brought forth often reinforce the point when accurately analyzed. See Rogue States, 192f., for some examples. The business world understood as well as critics of the military system that there were more efficient ways to develop the modern economy, but recognized that “military pump-priming” is far better than easily-available alternatives. It transfers risk and cost more easily to the public, undermines democracy, increases managerial prerogatives, and generally serves to enhance power and privilege. Questions of efficiency were decidedly secondary. World Orders, 100f., and for more detail, Turning the Tide, 327.

Chomsky om Chile:
In Chile, the concertacion did very little for the poor. They talk about reducing the poverty rate from 44% to below 20%, but that simply means reversing the Pinochet years. Under Allende it was about 20%. Pinera's victory is a little like that of the "conservatives" in Europe. He's accepting the mild reforms of the post-Pinochet years, and claiming to be able to manage the society better. The difference between the parties is slight. Same in the other cases.
...
We know that there was an economic disaster by the early 80s. After all, the Chicago boys destroyed the economy so completely that the state had to take over in 1982, controlling more of the economy than under Allende, then turning the economy over to technocrats who managed to undo the damage at least partly, processes that the Concertacion carried forward though with not much change -- some, including privatizing parts of Codelco, the core of the economy, which Pinochet was afraid to touch.

Kort om den ''nyliberale'' Reagan:
State expenditure relative to GDP went up under Reagan.

Om Plan Colombia:
Plan Colombia was in large measure a political program, empowering the paramilitaries, narcotraffickers, and the rich, and devastating much of the rural society -- which is why Colombia has the second largest displaced population in the world (after Sudan). By now the successors of the paras and their narcotrafficking associates have substantial power in the country, and Colombia continues to have by far the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. There's a recent Human Rights Watch report about this. Also a good article by Greg Grandin in the Nation, in the context of US efforts to remilitarize the subcontinent. Since the worst violence by far was by the government and the paramilitaries, if the intent of Plan Colombia had been to reduce violence, it would have targeted them, instead of empowering them (except for the most extremist elements among them) and targeting the rural population. Propaganda of course directs away from the main source of violence, US allies.

There definitely was a secondary problem with FARC and ELN. Negotiations and recognition of the rights of Campesinos, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous would have been the best way to deal with that. That had very substantial prospects. 20 years ago the guerrillas accepted an offer to enter the political system, and were promptly slaughtered by the US-backed state terrorist forces. That option is probably past now that Plan Colombia achieved its goal of turning the FARC into a terrorist army.

Om vetenskapen som en kollektiv process där ideer uppstår exempelvis i samspel med studenter på föreläsningar etc:
I think it's quite normal in the sciences. It's even revealed in technical papers. Often signed by many people with acknowledgments to many others. I can't think of anyone who has written about it, because it's so normal, though there is sometimes writing about individuals who were pretty much loners, but even that is misleading because of the constant contacts.

Gar Alperovitz klokt om att förtjäna sin inkomst

2010-02-11T22:36:00.001+01:00

Watch this at Fox Business

Sjukvård billigare via skattesedeln

2008-04-03T14:05:00.000+02:00

Andreas Bergh skriver, inspirerad av Santos i tv-serien Vita Huset, en hel del intressant om offentliga kontra privata sjukförsäkringar här.

''Påståendet att Medicares administration bara är 2 procent har naturligtvis ifrågasatts, men den kanske mest citerade rapporten kommer ändå bara upp i 5-8 procent. I grunden är det alltjämt så att ett obligatoriskt system som inte behöver bry sig om premiediskriminering, riskbedömningar och marknadsföring därför kan bli billigare än en marknadslösning.''

Sverige och tillväxten

2008-03-29T21:06:00.000+01:00

För någon vecka sedan påpekade jag i ett kommentarsfält på Andreas Berghs blogg att Sveriges tillväxt det senaste decenniet varit fullt jämförbar med USA:s. Sveriges genomsnittliga tillväxt har till och med varit aningen högre än USA:s under perioden 1997-2006.

Tillväxt i real BNP, 1997-2006
Sverige 2.8 %
USA 2.7 %
EU15 2.1 %

Källa: Nuteks sammanställning av Eurostat-statistik.

Andreas Bergh kommenterar detta här. Nu börjar det, enligt Bergh, ''bli *väldigt* svårt för de som vill svartmåla Sverige att bortförklara Sveriges goda tillväxt med återhämtning efter krisen 1991-93.''

''Demokrati'' på den fria marknaden

2008-03-21T15:10:00.000+01:00

Arbetarpress och annonsörer
Följande avsnitt är hämtat ur fotnoterna till Understanding Power - The indispensable Noam Chomsky, The New Press, 2002 (På svenska; Att förstå makten, Ordfront förlag, 2008):

On the popularity of the daily labor press in England and its audience's involvement, but its fatal inability to attract capital, see for example, James Curran, "Advertising and the Press," in James Curran, ed., The British Press: a Manifesto, London: MacMillan, 1978, pp. 229-267. An excerpt (pp. 251-253):

The Daily Herald's central problem was not that it appealed to fewer people but that it appealed to the wrong people. . . . [The Daily Herald appealed] overwhelmingly to working-class rather than to middle-class readers. These characteristics had correlates in terms of purchasing behaviour that made the Daily Herald a highly marginal advertising medium. . . . But if the Daily Herald was lacking in appeal to advertisers it did not lack in appeal to a section of the general public. . . . The Daily Herald "idea" may be regarded as misguided, its readers can be dismissed as being of no social consequence. But there were, as it happens, a lot of them -- in fact over five times as many readers as those of The [London] Times. . . . With 4.7million readers in the last year, the Daily Herald actually had almost double the readership of The Times, the Financial Times and the Guardian combined. Indeed, when it was forced to close, the Daily Herald was probably amongst the twenty largest circulation dailies in the world. It died, not from lack of readers, but because its readers did not constitute a valuable advertising market. Regular Daily Herald readers were also exceptionally devoted to their paper. Unpublished survey research shows that Daily Herald readers thought more highly of [and read more in] their paper than the regular readers of any other popular newspaper. . . .[T]he Daily Herald was only one of a number of casualties of the advertising licensing system. The News Chronicle, a legatee of the dissenting radical, liberal tradition, was forced to close in 1960 with a circulation six times that of the Guardian, and over double that of The Times and the Guardian combined. It paid a heavy price for appealing to an inferior quality of reader (even though its readers were almost as devoted as Herald readers). . . . The radical Sunday Citizen . . . also finally succumbed in 1967, after being progressively strangulated by lack of advertising support. Similarly, the study describes how the mainstream London Times lost money in the late 1960s and early 1970s by seeking a wider readership. Although its circulation rose by fully 69percent through "an aggressive promotion campaign that recruited large numbers of lower-middle and even working-class readers," that change did not create a corresponding increase in advertising to offset the costs, and the paper "was forced to set about shedding part of its new readership as a conscious act of management policy" (p. 258).

See also, Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990, p. 59 ("T.V. and radio get nearly 100 percent of their income from advertisers, newspapers 75 percent, and magazines about 50 percent. . . . Between 60 and 70 percent of newspaper space is reserved for ads, while 22 percent of T.V. time is filled with commercials"); Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978 (on the constraining influences of advertising on the media); Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997 (original 1983), especially chs. 6 to 9; James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, London: Routledge, 1981, pp. 118-132; Alfred McClung Lee, The Daily Newspaper in America: The Evolution of a Social Instrument, New York: Macmillan, 1937.

Marknaden är inte demokratisk
''De större medierna har de väsentliga resurserna och det får mindre medier runtom i landet att i stort sett acceptera den ram som de stora mediekanalerna presenterar och anpassa sig till den - för om tidningar i Pittsburgh eller Salt Lake City vill veta något om till exempel Angola så är det mycket få av dem som kan skicka ut egna korrespondenter, har egna analytiker och annat. De ledande mediekanalerna har, om man tittar efter, vissa viktiga drag gemensamt. För det första är de institutioner som sätter dagordningen storföretag, egentligen gigantiska megakoncerner. Och de har som andra företag en produkt att sälja och en marknad som de vill sälja till; produkten är publiken och marknaden är annonsörerna. En tidnings ekonomiska struktur är alltså att den säljer läsare till andra företag. Inte är det tidningar man främst vill sälja till folk - en tidning i ekonomisk nöd försöker skära ner upplagan och uppgradera läsekretsen vilket höjer annonsintäkterna.''
- Noam Chomsky under en diskussion, 1989

''If you care about hunger, eat less meat''

2008-03-19T22:37:00.000+01:00

George Monbiot om köttätande.

Utveckling

2008-02-28T08:53:00.000+01:00

Magnus Linton gör här en kortfattad men innehållsrik sammanfattning av Latinamerikas framsteg de senaste åren.