syarzhuk: Chomsky @ MIT

Chomsky @ MIT
Huge auditorium - I'd say 500 people or so. A lot of political literature distributed/sold at the entrance - Marxist Workers Rights newspaper, Trotsky's books, advertisement for "Dennis Kucinich for president". People treat Chomsky as a primadonna - clapping down when the talk organizers/supporters take too long to make their announcements. Chomsky talks for more than an hour, then answers the questions (I wanted to ask why he releases his spoken word CDs on Alternative Tentacles, of all the labels - the person right behind me gets to ask the last question for the day). The talk was recorded. Some of the things he said that I remember:
- Back in 1970s the MIT audience was almost 100% well-dressed white males; it's much better now;
- there used to be a special presidential task force outside of CIA and FBI back in 1960s; they assassinated at least one member of Black Panthers;
- since 1970(?) the real income of the 90% of the population decreased by 7%, while the income of the top 0.01% grew 600% (or was it 600 times?);
- Alan Greenspan is called "Golden Alan"; he supposedly said (or maybe what he said could be interpreted as) "for economy to be good we need to keep the rich people happy and everyone else frightened";
- Transnational corporations are command structures that are very far from traditional capitalism; if Adam Smith saw what they are doing he would turn in his grave;
- US is a world bully, similar to mafia; when a store owner stops paying the mafia they have to severely beat him up to make an example; that's why US invaded Iraq; that's why US wants to conquer space;
- Democrats are very similar to Republicans; the political spectrum is very narrow, but it is not zero; so for current elections the doctrine is "anyone but Bush", after that we should "work on issues";
- since NAFTA came into effect the official trade figures went up, however most of it is "trade" within a single corporation - from 50% of all the trade before NAFTA to 66% after; the "real trade" has declined;
- about 40% of drug research is funded by the government; if we funded 100% and had the government set the drug prices the savings would be 50X (I must've misheard this one, because that sounds really out of whack);
- US and Britain are leaders by far by the number of times they used the veto power in UN against the will of other countries;
- US allowed Pakistan and Israel create nuclear weapons while knowing about it;
- Only in Anglo-American legal system the corporate management is by law required to do bad things to everyone but shareholders (or something to that extent, essentially saying US system requires corporate management to be criminals)
- Outsourcing is a great thing for the transnational corporations since they can go on exploiting poor Chinese and reduce costs; see the comment about Adam Smith above;
...and so on and so on and so on.

I don't want to comment on these in detail. Overall, Chomsky seems like a very smart man who is very careful in fact picking. I don't think I heard anything that I haven't read in left propaganda before. It was worth going, but I don't think I want to go hear him or anyone from that camp again.

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ded_maxim@lj
2004-02-15 17:49 (ссылка)

What exactly do you refer to as "fact picking?"

Transnational corporations do, in fact, only preach free-market ideology; in reality, they use all means available to them in order to crush competition (example: banks merging, claiming that if they are too small they "cannot compete effectively").

Pharmaceutical companies are also responsible for the proliferation of disease in Third World countries -- they use their influence with the IMF, as well as EU intellectual property laws, to effectively shut down local competitors. You can read about it in Joseph Stiglitz's book "Globalization and Its Discontents." Correct me if I'm wrong, but Stiglitz is hardly a left-wing ideologue.

Go ahead and name a multinational corporation which conducts its business with complete honesty and without resorting to political pressure in order to keep steady profit.

Of course, there is a lot of Chomsky worshipping going on, but one certainly should not succumb to the temptation of defining Chomsky through his audience.

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syarzhuk@lj
2004-02-16 00:52 (ссылка)

What exactly do you refer to as "fact picking?"

I am not as qualified and as well-read as Chomsky, so it would take me a lot of preparation to refute all the wrong points he makes; and in order to be a successful spinner you'd have to tell at least 50% truth, which makes it even harder to separate the right from wrong. Even so, here's some of my thoughts and suspicions.

Why compare the bottom 90% with the top 0.01%? Why not just compare the bottom 50 with the top 50 (or, taking into account Pareto's income distribution, bottom 90% with the top 10%)? Or the bottom 0.01% with the top 0.01%?
Again, how do you arrive (http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/TCEH/2000/TCEH_2.html) with the figure of "real income" going 7% down? How do you put a price tag on cell phones, laptops, PDAs and MRI brain studies?

Why tell about poor Chinese exploited by the evil multinational sweatshops when it's obvious that they would only work in a sweatshop because they can't find better employment anywhere else?

Why is he calling the trade between American and Mexican corporations good and the "trade" between American and Mexican divisions of the same corporation bad? After all, the end result is the same - Mexican workers get jobs, and Americans lose them, so what's the difference?

Pharmaceutical companies are also responsible for the proliferation of disease in Third World countries
Laughable argument - before pharmaceutical companies the proliferation of diseases in third world wasn't any smaller than today. You might argue that big pharmas are responsible for not driving the disease rate down - but I don't see where it written anywhere that US pharmas have the obligation to drop everything and go cure sick Africans. Honestly, in this regard I'd prefer libertarian model - everyone makes as much profit as he can and then donates to sick Africans as much as he wishes.

Transnational corporations do, in fact, only preach free-market ideology;
Hmmm... any corporation doesn't function internally on the principles of free market; so Chomsky is technically right calling them command structures.
in reality, they use all means available to them in order to crush competition (example: banks merging, claiming that if they are too small they "cannot compete effectively").
Having no competition and establishing artificial barriers to entry is not free market; having competition is - and no matter what they're using to crush the competition, be it price wars or mergers - it is free market at work.

Go ahead and name a multinational corporation which conducts its business with complete honesty and without resorting to political pressure in order to keep steady profit
"Honesty" in business world is hard to define. The only definition I can come up with is - government specifies the profit level and the corporation cannot exceed it. If the "acceptable" profit level is, let's say 10%, and corporation gets 15% - is it being dishonest or is it working better and reaps the rewards from the free market?

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ded_maxim@lj
2004-02-16 04:28 (ссылка)

Laughable argument - before pharmaceutical companies the proliferation of diseases in third world wasn't any smaller than today.

OK, so using the term "proliferation" may have been a tad melodramatic.

You might argue that big pharmas are responsible for not driving the disease rate down - but I don't see where it written anywhere that US pharmas have the obligation to drop everything and go cure sick Africans.

A priori, US pharmas have no obligation "to drop everything and go cure sick Africans." However, once they take it upon themselves to conduct business in Africa under the auspices of the IMF and the World Bank, they effectively acknowledge that there will be a humanitarian component to their operation in Africa. They can no longer use the same "competitive" tactics there, simply because the laws of textbook economics are inapplicable to developing economies (non-equilibrated market, etc. etc.). Citing IP laws in order to sell drugs to Africans at prices they cannot afford is predatory business practice, incompatible with the original stated mission of the IMF (at least, according to Keynes; since then, things have changed, and the IMF serves to protect the interests of the Western big business, while at the same time enforcing entry barriers to Western markets for businesses from developing countries).

having competition is - and no matter what they're using to crush the competition, be it price wars or mergers - it is free market at work.

Yes, indeed it is, provided that the corporations do not rely on legal or political means to secure their competitive position. Once they begin doing that, at the same time preaching free-market ideology (which, for one thing, requires no government intervention whatsoever), we have mere hypocrisy and greed instead of free enterprise.

"Honesty" in business world is hard to define. The only definition I can come up with is - government specifies the profit level and the corporation cannot exceed it. If the "acceptable" profit level is, let's say 10%, and corporation gets 15% - is it being dishonest or is it working better and reaps the rewards from the free market?

Honesty means living by what you profess to be your guiding principles. If you cannot effectively compete without lobbying for favorable legislations, you deserve to be driven off the market.

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