Ayn Rand: a deusa do conservadorismo americano, 2

Globalist Perspective > Global PoliticsAyn Rand: The Siren of U.S. Conservatism (Part II)   By Brent Ranalli | Saturday, November 03, 2012   Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency, may not view himself as an acolyte of Ayn Rand. But his adulation of the wealthiest Americans as job creators and his contempt for those who earn too little to pay income taxes is certainly Randian in nature. Brent Ranalli examines Rand's influence on the economic and political thinking inside today's Republican Party.

n its purest form, Ayn Rand's philosophy is startlingly radical and of dubious moral value, and in any case makes apparently impossible demands on human nature. (Part I of this article is here.) An observer of Republican politics would have to conclude that the 2012 campaign season has been the season of Ayn Rand. Yet Rand has enjoyed a wide following. Who looks up to Rand, and what have they absorbed from her writing? How is Rand's influence felt in today's political culture? Rand's first hard-core disciples, her inner circle in what was called, with irony, the "Collective," were overwhelmingly Jews of Eastern European heritage, like herself, who hailed from Canada and the United States. They were secular Jews but unassimilated — people who didn't quite "fit in" in their communities. It would appear that in Rand's circle they found a place to belong, one that affirmed their undoubtedly great intelligence and permitted them a feeling of superiority. It was by all accounts an oppressive environment, and some have compared it to a mini-Stalinist society, complete with periodic purges. Members of the Collective strove for super-human individualism on the basis of cold rationality. They managed to produce a stifling conformity (since there is only one most rational answer to any question) in matters great and small — politics, dress, musical and artistic taste. Rand's influence on the wider world of American politics was first felt in the fledgling libertarian movement. Rand herself refused any association with the libertarians, and called them plagiarists and worse. But her writings helped galvanize the movement. Over the decades, as the libertarians have grown in stature and influence within the conservative "big tent," Randian ideas have become more mainstream. Individual Rand devotees have occasionally achieved positions of power and been able to shape policy. The most prominent of these was Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. As the libertarians have grown in stature and influence within the conservative "big tent," Randian ideas have become more mainstream. Greenspan was among the few early disciples who remained on good terms with Rand to the end of her life. As many commentators have noted, Greenspan's policy career provides a cautionary tale about putting Rand's ideas into practice. Greenspan wrote articles for Rand's publications espousing an ideology of extreme deregulation, looking forward to a world in which even building codes were abolished. Such requirements simply set low expectations, he thought. "If building codes set minimum standards of construction," Greenspan wrote in an essay he contributed to Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, "a builder does not get very much competitive advantage by exceeding those standards and, accordingly, he tends to meet only the minimum." Why not take away all codes and let builders figure out for themselves how safe they need to make their buildings? When he was in a position of power inside the Beltway, Greenspan was able to conduct the experiment on a supreme scale: he presided over and lent support to a systematic dismantling of financial regulations designed to provide minimum protection to creditors. And he got his answer: when minimum standards are taken away, you get chaos, disaster. For deregulation does not mean eliminating standards, it means lowering them. When the minimum consumer protection expected of a builder or a banker is zero, he does not get very much competitive advantage by exceeding those standards. Accordingly, he tends to meet only the minimum — zero — and the consumer suffers the consequences. The conventional journalistic account of the Greenspan story ends in 2008 with his acknowledging to Congress that he recognized a "flaw" in the economic ideology that had guided him for decades. The Randian policy program of extreme deregulation was dead, it seemed — refuted by events and repudiated by its great architect. Sales of Rand's books have skyrocketed since the financial crisis. Atlas Shrugged sold more copies in 2011 than it did in 1957. But that is not how the story ends. Greenspan hasbacktracked from his statement on numerous occasions and reaffirmed his Randian convictions. And in the culture at large, proponents of extreme anti-regulatory ideology are still heard. Indeed, the Republican Party is leaning ever more heavily in the direction of Rand-influenced libertarianism. Reductions in regulation and taxation, always front and center in the Party's platform, are increasingly discussed not merely as purported means to economic prosperity but as moral imperatives. At the same time, the incoming president of the Cato Institute, the libertarians' flagship think tank, has declared an intention to adhere even more strictly to a Randian orthodoxy. Sales of Rand's books have skyrocketed since the financial crisis. According to the Ayn Rand Institute,Atlas Shrugged sold more copies in 2011 than it did when it was a best seller in 1957. While some see the economic crisis as proof of the bankruptcy of Randian policies, other see the government's struggle to response to the crisis as a replay of the slow societal meltdown depicted in Atlas Shrugged. They are convinced that we are on a path marked out prophetically by Rand. The Republicans' Randian moment An observer of Republican politics familiar with Rand's ideas would have to conclude that the 2012 campaign season has been the season of Ayn Rand. The selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate is the most obvious signpost. For political reasons, Ryan has tried to distance himself from Rand. But his affinity is well known. He has addressed crowds at organizations dedicated to promoting Rand's thinking. In a 2005 speech at the Atlas Society, then-Congressman Ryan described the profound influence Rand has had on his thinking. He has distributed Rand's writings to his staff. It is hardly necessary that the rest of us share Rand's paranoia. No one needs to be burdened with the idea that a health care bill is the moral equivalent of a pogrom. The Randian mood of the Romney campaign, though, consists of far more than Ryan's private views. It is pervasive, in discussions of taxes and regulations as moral issues. Perhaps most glaringly, it has been visible in Romney's comments about the 47% of American who don't earn enough to pay federal income tax. Ayn Rand taught that "ideas matter." Given that we are living in a peculiarly Randian Republican moment, a good way to analyze some of the current presidential campaign propaganda is to strip it down to its Randian essentials.   Exhibit 1: Preoccupation with the notion of "socialism" The current obsession of conservative pundits in the United States with the threat of "socialism" and "communism" is, on its surface, difficult to fathom. A recent political ad by Thomas Peterffy, the billionaire founder of a stock brokerage, has brought the message to viewers in major television markets, conjuring up images of the dark days of totalitarian communism in Peterffy's native Hungary. But the Soviet empire is long gone, and international Marxism is a dead letter. U.S. socialist political parties are even more marginal than the Greens. The Democratic Party is a centrist party by international standards. Why, in the 21st century, the hysteria about socialism? The answer lies, at least in part, in Rand's ideological paranoia about Soviet communism. Rand's younger sister Nora, who grew up in Russia, when finally reunited with Rand in New York in later years could not shake the fear that Rand's chauffeur and cook were U.S. government spies. Rand too — understandably, given the trauma of her adolescent years — had similarly magnified ideas of the menace of communism. In her black-and-white way, she equated Soviet tyranny and collectivist ideology with each other and with governmental activity of every sort. She saw the threat of international communism in every shadow, and resisted it with every fiber. Mitt Romney's derision of the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income tax could have come straight out of Atlas Shrugged. The immorality of nearly every aspect of government was a central theme of Rand's ideology. Rand's system of belief also gave us the notion that there is a perfectly transparent slippery slope from almost any sort of government coercion to Soviet-style despotism, and from almost any sort of government service to helpless dependency. Rand's paranoia was entirely understandable. It is hardly necessary that the rest of us share it. No one needs to be burdened with the idea that a health care bill is the moral equivalent of a pogrom.   Exhibit 2: Worshiping the wealthy Both left and right have been playing at class welfare this election cycle. The way the right is going about it has a peculiarly Randian imprimatur. Consider Mitt Romney's derision of the 47% of Americans who don't earn enough to pay federal income tax. (He ignored the fact this group pays other federal, state, and local taxes, many of which are regressive.) Romney accused these citizens — half of the nation — of lacking in personal responsibility, being dependent on government, and having an entitlement mentality. The speech could have come straight out of Atlas Shrugged. Romney may not be a Rand follower himself, but he has clearly absorbed the talking points, whether consciously or merely from digesting the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. In Rand's literary imagination there were two kinds of people: the productive and the parasites. The productive, an elite minority, create and amass wealth. Meanwhile, the masses of parasites use their numbers and the power of government to extract that wealth. The less well-off are derided for their "victim mentality," while the wealthy elite are seen as the true victims. Rand lived in a simple, polarized world. She exhibited little curiosity about the lives of others, especially those she deemed "degenerate," whether individuals or groups (e.g., Native Americans, Arabs). This lack of curiosity and empathy was her own personal limitation and failing. Seizing on Ayn Rand's simple story of virtue and vice focuses energy on nonexistent threats rather than real, pressing, complex problems. That in the fantasy world of Atlas Shrugged, she should paint the masses with a broad brush as entitlement-minded and lacking in personal responsibility is an acceptable if dubious literary conceit. That a candidate for the U.S. presidency should spout these generalizations as if they applied to the real 47% in all its diversity — students and the elderly, educators and military personnel, the working poor and the middle class, lifelong Republicans and Democrats — is merely inane. As for the wealthy: In the current campaign, we see the Randian moral double standard applied on a class basis by some conservative commentators. The poor are chastised for accepting government assistance, but no stigma attaches to the wealthy who (like Romney at Bain Capital) accept government subsidies. The poor are scolded for not contributing enough in taxes, but Romney's relatively low tax rate (low by middle-class standards, because based on capital gains rather than earned income) is justified and defended.   Exhibit 3: Individualism The central positive message of Rand was individual responsibility and individual initiative. These themes are at the center of the Romney's campaign, and the guiding sentiment behind the adoption of the "We Built This" slogan. Despite the mileage Romney got out of the slogan, one of the great ironies of the campaign has been that there is really not all that much difference between his views and those originally articulated by President Obama. Romney talks about the supportive environment of family, church and community that enables the individual entrepreneur to thrive. Obama spoke of the inspiring teacher, the previous generations of entrepreneurs and workers on whose shoulders we stand. It is only through Randian glasses that Obama's views can be interpreted as "collectivist" and Romney's as radically individualist. That this debate has become a flashpoint in the campaign speaks to the pervasiveness of the Randian perspective. Capitalism, not democracy Ayn Rand is a peculiar figure in the history of American political consciousness. She stood for classic American values like hard work, individual responsibility and free enterprise. Asked what the best sort of political system was, Rand spoke unhesitatingly in favor of American capitalism, not American democracy. But as they passed through the prism of her tortured Russian mind into her romantic novels, they refracted into grotesque caricatures of themselves. Hers is a black-and-white world in which reason, wealth, virtue and free enterprise are pitted against unreason, squalor, mediocrity and collectivism, in an apocalyptic drama painted right across the body of the American public. Asked by an interviewer what she thought the best sort of political system was, Rand pronounced unhesitatingly in favor of the system in her adopted homeland — but her response was not "democracy," it was "capitalism." And she did not stop to correct herself, but elaborated on the notion of capitalism as a political system. The thought of democracy, or of a republic, did not appear to enter her mind. This episode epitomizes the depth of her naiveté about American traditions and values, of being caught up in her own system of political thought, forged by her experience under czarist autocracy and totalitarian communism. The Republican Party is facing an identity crisis. In recent decades, it has been the bastion of the Protestant white male — now, increasingly, a demographically endangered species. To survive, the party must adapt. Seizing on Ayn Rand's simple story of virtue and vice, heroes and villains, "socialism" and radical individualism, is a strategy that must seem particularly tempting. But it is both unwise and dangerous. It divides rather than unites. It focuses energy on nonexistent threats (socialism) rather than real, pressing, complex problems. It demands an adherence to a black-and-white worldview and discourages curiosity about the messiness of reality and the legitimate perspectives of other people. And it is pierced through with a dangerous and anti-democratic Nietzschean quality, a moral double-standard for the "right sort of people" — the wealthy and the self-styled virtuous, the heroes of the Randian drama in their head. Part I of this article is here.

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Transportes e comunicacoes: uma historia global

From: The Globalist (http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?storyid=9522)

Globalist Analysis > Global Trade A Brief History of Supply Chains By Sanjeev Sanyal | Thursday, March 22, 2012 Before there were Chinamax cargo ships, cloud computing and satellite communications, there were steamships and the telegraph. Before that were sailing vessels and pack animals. Sanjeev Sanyal, global strategist at Deutsche Bank, traces the technological developments that have changed the way the world moves its imports and exports.

n ancient times, transportation technology was basic and the cost of moving goods was an important determinant of the production and distribution of a product. Thus, goods were put together close to the source of raw materials. Then, these products made their way in a largely linear chain to their end consumer. The first product to be put together with a truly global supply network was rum — with African slaves sending West Indian sugarcane to New England distilleries. Ancient trade routes like the Silk Road through Central Asia and the Spice Route over the Indian Ocean were mostly linear chains that took a finished product to its ultimate destination. Moreover, given the high costs, long-distance trade was limited to high-value items such as spices, weapons and luxury goods. The production and consumption of most items was local. This meant that producer and consumer could directly communicate with each other, and the customer could specify exactly what he or she wanted. This was the world of the village weaver, potter, blacksmith and cobbler. The bulk of pre-industrial artisan manufacturing, therefore, was customized to the needs of the end consumer. It was only in the 18th century that shipping technology improved enough to allow the large-scale functioning of an international production network. Interestingly, the first product to be put together with a truly global supply network was rum. Slave labor was imported from West Africa to the Caribbean in order to grow sugarcane (a plant originally from India). Sugarcane molasses were then shipped to New England where distilleries in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Staten Island turned it into rum. Some of the drink was consumed locally, but much of it was then sold in bottles and barrels in Europe and all over the Atlantic. It is said that the distillation of rum was the single biggest industry in colonial America — although its importance is now all but forgotten except in popular tales about pirates. Shipping to the world As the Industrial Revolution took shape in the late 18th century, production networks took on a totally different scale. The cotton industry was the center of this shift. Prior to the technological innovations of the Industrial Revolution, India was the cotton manufacturing center of the world and exported its textiles all over the world. Competition from imported cotton was a major cause of resentment for the traditional wool industry in Britain. Until World War I, communications was the poor cousin of transportation. We have records of heated debates in Parliament in the 1600s and early 1700s about how to restrict the use of cotton. A law passed in 1699 stipulated that "all magistrates, judges, students of the universities, and all professors of the common and civil law… [must] wear gowns made of woolen manufacture." There were even laws that stipulated that corpses had to be buried wearing sheep's wool. By the end of the 18th century, however, technological shifts dramatically changed the cotton industry. The spinning jenny patented by James Hargreaves in 1770 increased the amount of yarn spun by a worker by several orders of magnitude even as the flying shuttle revolutionized the speed of weaving the yarn into cloth. Meanwhile, the American inventor Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin that mechanized the process of separating cotton wool from the seeds. All these changes were complimented by improvements in ship design and, by the mid-19th century, the introduction of steamships. As a result of all these innovations, a global supply network emerged that involved shipping cotton grown in the southern United States (often using slave labor) to the cotton mills in England. The finished cloth was then shipped out to the rest of the world. Over the next century, transportation technology witnessed major breakthroughs that included the railways, trams, bicycles and the Suez Canal. By the time of World War I, we also had the Panama Canal, automobiles and even early airplanes. As a result, the cost of transporting goods dropped sharply. Ocean freight rates, for instance, fell 70% between 1840 and 1910. The improvements in transportation also improved communications — steamships and railways could also carry letters — but there were few independent improvements in communications with the single exception of the telegraph. In other words, communications was the poor cousin of transportation until World War I. As mass manufacturing ramped up, it was no longer possible for individual customers to specify requirements. The supply chain responded by standardizing products. A world with good transportation, but relatively underdeveloped communications, strongly influenced the industrial structure and supply networks of the early 20th century. Production was centralized at major transportation hubs, and Fordist production lines were used to mass manufacture goods. Vertically integrated industrial structures were needed to minimize communication gaps between various segments of the production process. As mass manufacturing was ramped up, it was no longer possible for individual customers to specify requirements. The supply chain responded by standardizing products. Ultimately, even downstream distribution networks succumbed to standardization. This shift is best summarized by Henry Ford's famous comment, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." Retailing shifted in favor of large department stores that could house a large selection of standardized products, with price and variety substituting for customization. Postwar technological changes The Second World War witnessed the pinnacle of the Fordist production system. By 1950s, a new generation of technological changes began to alter the structure of global supply networks. As a break from the past, communications began to influence developments independently of transportation. The telephone was patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, but it would be well into the 1920s before phones were commonplace in the United States. The first transatlantic call between London and New York took place in 1926, and another two decades would pass before long-distance telephony was common in the rest of the world. Meanwhile, transportation also went through another major innovation — containerization. Most people tend to ignore the importance of this innovation, but it was a radical idea. Until the 1950s, ships had to be manually loaded piece-by-piece. Industrial cables had to be carefully stacked next to boxes of delicate porcelain and perhaps a basket containing fruit. The first transatlantic call took place in 1926. Another two decades would pass before long-distance telephony was common in the rest of the world. This was not just time consuming, it was also very expensive. The cost of port handling accounted for almost half the transportation cost of shipping a truckload of medicine from Chicago to Nancy, France. Moreover, the system was prone to breakage and theft. It was not uncommon that the shipment got lost — and it was very difficult to trace it. In the 1950s, entrepreneurs like Malcolm McLean began to revolutionize shipping — and logistics in general — by introducing standardized containers that could not merely be sealed and loaded into ships, but also could be seamlessly passed on to the truck and rail network. Both ships and ports were redesigned to handle containers. Ships purchased in the early 1970s could carry four times the cargo capacity of traditional ships. Their faster speeds and turnaround time in port allowed them to make six round trips a year between Europe and the Far East, compared to three-and-a-half for the older ships. Interestingly, western countries persisted with building old style ports well into the 1970s. They already had large existing fleets and other infrastructure from the pre-container age and could not easily adopt full containerization. Bureaucratic persistence and political pressure from port workers' unions also slowed the shift. Thus, it was Asia that wholeheartedly adopted containerization and built large new facilities. Hong Kong and Singapore asserted themselves as major ports and clearinghouses for containerized shipping. These two ports had established themselves as the world's largest container ports by 1990 — and Asian ports continue to dominate to this day. Communications revolution The combination of containerization and telephones (and related technologies like the fax) caused the next shift in supply networks. Improved communications meant that it was possible to exactly specify components and products. Containerization meant that these components could be transported cheaply and be delivered "just-in-time." Western countries had large existing fleets and other infrastructure from the pre-container age and could not easily adopt full containerization. In turn, this allowed the production process to be neatly modularized and contracted out. Ironically, one of the first companies to take advantage of this was the U.S.-based toy manufacturer Mattel, which used it to produce the Barbie. Despite Barbie's All-American image, the doll was produced abroad from its very inception in 1959. The earliest Barbie factories were in Japan and Taiwan, and today it is put together by a complex network spanning the world. Although the technologies and practices related to the new supply chains originated in the United States, it was Japan that leveraged them to fundamentally change production systems. Dubbed "lean production," the Japanese production system was both more flexible as well as able to sharply reduce the need to carry inventory. It made the vertically-integrated Fordist assembly line obsolete. Many of the elements of the new system evolved originally in the automobile industry, but they were soon being applied in other sectors too. The electronics industry turned out to be especially well-suited to the decentralized production process. By the late 1980s, the whole world was trying to copy the Japanese system. Nonetheless, it was East Asia that best internalized the network-based production system. There were many reasons for this. First, much of the infrastructure in the region was new. In many cases, the infrastructure was specifically created to support supply chains for Japanese companies. Second, geography helped since most of the key economic hubs could be linked by sea. This was a key advantage since transportation by ship is much cheaper than by rail or road. Third, East Asia had a very heterogeneous mix of skills and wages. This meant that different countries could specialize into different parts of the modular production chain. The addition of Southeast Asia and China's special economic zones to the supply chain meant that the production network could remain within the region even after wages began to rise in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. Asia wholeheartedly adopted containerization and built large new facilities. Hong Kong and Singapore asserted themselves as major ports for containerized shipping. By the 1990s, much of the world's manufacturing had shifted to the new system, but the decade will be remembered for what is best described as the "Communications Revolution." Within a few short years, technologies such as mobile telephony and the internet went from being barely known to being ubiquitous. The efficiency of transportation networks also improved but, in a role reversal, these gains were now driven mostly by improvements in communications technology. The cost of real-time international communications had been prohibitive in the 1930s and barely affordable in the 1960s, but became irrelevant by the end of the 1990s. This not only made lean manufacturing ever more efficient, but allowed the creation of international production networks in a completely new area — services. Around 1993, the management of American Express noticed that the cost of running their credit card operations in India was significantly lower than that for comparable businesses elsewhere. So when the bank decided a year later to consolidate their finance functions in three locations around the world, India was chosen to anchor the Asia-Pacific operations. Very soon companies like British Airways and GE Capital were setting up large outsourcing units in India. Thus was born the global services outsourcing business. Meanwhile, the efficiency gains of "just-in-time" and lean production were making their way downstream and being applied to distribution networks. One of the results of this change was the rise of hyper-markets like Walmart and Carrefour. By leveraging scale, logistics and lean inventories, they were able to bring down retail prices as well as provide consumers with unprecedented choice. Into the cloud The lean production model was the result of innovations in containerization and fixed-line telephony. Although production was decentralized, we are still dealing with a pyramid of rigid industrial relationships (such as the Japanese keiretsu). The communications revolution fundamentally changed this environment by making it possible for everyone to contact everyone, specify a requirement and negotiate a price. This model retained most of the advantages of lean production, but was far more flexible and adaptable. The supply chain was no longer a chain but a cloud — an evolving ecosystem where economic agents could collaborate in one sphere and complete in another. The production of Apple's iPhone and iPad are good examples of this new production network. The iPhone is made up of inputs sourced from around the world that are then assembled together by Foxconn in China. The product never passes through an Apple facility during its production. Yet, Apple receives 66% of the price of an iPhone while Foxconn, the final assembler, receives a paltry 2.5%. Moreover, it is also worth noting that Samsung is a major supplier of the iPhone's components, even though it completes directly with Apple in the mobile phone and tablet markets. Now watch as the distribution end of the chain also dissolves into a cloud. Editor's note: This article was adapted from "Transportation Versus Communications: What is Next?" from the Wide Angle series published by Deutsche Bank.