cyberutopian libertarianism

Enzo Michelangeli em at who.net
Sun Dec 13 19:54:31 PST 1998


-----Original Message----- From: michael at ecst.csuchico.edu <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> Subject: cyberutopian libertarianism


>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> Figures. So many of you cybertypes can be so casual about displacement;
>> you can bounce from job to job, place to place, and survive. Not everyone
is
>> so blessed - those forces you dismiss as the "steel lobby" and "textile
>> lobby" include lots of displaced, downsized, and disposed of workers
along
>> with the nationalist union tops and pampered managers.

Oh, listen: what I see in Hong Kong is that everybody survived pretty well to a massive two-decades shift from a mass-production economy to nowadays' service economy (85% of the GDP, in these days). People learn new skills much faster than you believe. And besides, tell me one reason why I should be more concerned for the income of relatively well-fed first-world workers than for the one of their thirld-world would-be replacements, who earn fifty times less.

[Michael]:
>I respond with a lame telnet account:
>
>Yes, until you get to be about 40 and the industry considers you to be so
>much dead meat.

Hey, I'm 44 and still alive and kicking, thank you very much (despite the fact that in Cantonese "44", pronounced "say sap say", sounds like "Death, sure death" :-) )


> You have a still immature sector where start ups are still
> common, unlike the mature sectors, such as steel, coal, textiles,
> but also media. Little by little, the AOLs and the Microsofts
> invade this still fertile turf. As that happens, the brave
> libertarianism common to that sector will dissipate.

I sincerely believe I'll live long enough to see Microsoft's demise, or, at least, cutting to size. Not thanks to anti-trust action, but simply because they won't be able to move fast enough.

Cheers --

Enzo



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list