In article <2tnlbgINNjss@life.ai.mit.edu> you write:
Decline and Fall of the Nation State:
Tuesday's WSJ had an article on how private money market funds are starting to jawbone foreign governments just like the World Bank used to.
Case cited was Fidelity Investments calling Mexican bank officials during the Peso crisis after the recent assasination. They said "we'll invest another $18 billion (of ours and other fund's money) if you do what we say and if not..."
DCF
"If they hadn't killed quite so many people, you'd almost have to feel sorry for them."
--- WinQwk 2.0b#1165
Noam Chomsky spoke here in January and made the point that the increasing mobility of capital increasingly holds governments hostage. He felt that it was the current greatest danger to democracy, because it bypasses any leverage voters might have on politicians at the ballot box. It's not clear how well his argument really holds together, though, since the leverage that the mobile capital has is via the satisfaction of the voters. If capital flees a country, the population will be less productive, dissatisfied and vote the politicians out of office. So policies that favor capital in some sense also favor labor. Anyone else care to take shots at his argument or support it? Mobile capital does mean that population and government lose their ability to decree the relative rewards made to capital and labor. If labor requires too high a return, capital will go somewhere else. The ownership and control of capital IS highly skewed, but since it's still distributed among many parties, it is forced to compete and remain engaged, lest it depreciate in value. Go cyphercredits.