just a thought...
The acceleration of computer technology is finally taking a bite and elimintaing jobs. Improved technology will create a winner take all- effect. There will be more Bill Gateses. Which will effect the economy unfavourably. Millions will be left behind and their standard of living will drop. The widening gap may be the most important issue of this time.
And for more lovely news:
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"Newcomers, like the Russian, Albanian and Turkish Mafia groups, and formally regional groupings, like the Chinese Triads, are expanding rapidly as well into the core areas of the world-wide market. By the year 2020, the expansion of these and other criminal corporations will be not a threat, but a reality, practically subverting entire states of even the developed capitalist centers (Raith, 1995).
The logic of accumulation of these large, transnational criminal corporations seems nowadays to reflect the growing weight of ‘flexible specialization’, while the earlier, post-1932 model reflected ‘corporatist structures’ (Behan, 1996).
The ‘neo-corporatist’ structure of the classic Sicilian Mafia of Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina is more and more superseded by flexible newcomers like the Camorra and the drug cartels of Latin America and Eastern Europe. In terms of profits, the Asian gangs seem to be on the ascent. Indeed, a relevant issue for future world systems research: the interaction between long economic and civilization cycles and patterns of the criminal underworld.
The question cannot be neglected any longer by world system research: in the 1970s and 1980s, reported crimes increased worldwide by 5% per annum, in the US alone, there are now 2 million victims of violent crime every year (UNDP, 1997). The rise of crime is going parallel with the destruction of the family. Killings of minors increased in many developing countries by more than 40% in the 1990s. A third of married women in the developing countries are battered by their husbands during their lifetime. Dowry deaths in India are put at least at 5000 a year.
In the US, every year nearly 3 million children are reported to be victims of abuse and neglect. 75 million children in the developing world are working in slavery, prostitution and hazardous conditions; among these 1 million girls, mostly in Asia, are forced into prostitution each year. In the OECD countries, there are now annual 129000 reported adult rapes; the prison population has increased from 80 to 88, there are now 4.8 intentional homicides, committed by male persons per 100000 inhabitants, and 1020 annual road deaths per 100000 inhabitants.
The suicide rate is at 21 (males) and 7 (females); 34 annual divorces per 1000 couples are registered. The oligopolistic structure of late capitalism is now superseded by a kind of ‘Dreigroschenopera’ capitalism, begging the question of the very nature of capitalist elites that Schumpeter raised in the 1940s."
The acceleration of computer technology is finally taking a bite and elimintaing jobs. Improved technology will create a winner take all- effect. There will be more Bill Gateses. Which will effect the economy unfavourably. Millions will be left behind and their standard of living will drop. The widening gap may be the most important issue of this time.
And for more lovely news:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Newcomers, like the Russian, Albanian and Turkish Mafia groups, and formally regional groupings, like the Chinese Triads, are expanding rapidly as well into the core areas of the world-wide market. By the year 2020, the expansion of these and other criminal corporations will be not a threat, but a reality, practically subverting entire states of even the developed capitalist centers (Raith, 1995).
The logic of accumulation of these large, transnational criminal corporations seems nowadays to reflect the growing weight of ‘flexible specialization’, while the earlier, post-1932 model reflected ‘corporatist structures’ (Behan, 1996).
The ‘neo-corporatist’ structure of the classic Sicilian Mafia of Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina is more and more superseded by flexible newcomers like the Camorra and the drug cartels of Latin America and Eastern Europe. In terms of profits, the Asian gangs seem to be on the ascent. Indeed, a relevant issue for future world systems research: the interaction between long economic and civilization cycles and patterns of the criminal underworld.
The question cannot be neglected any longer by world system research: in the 1970s and 1980s, reported crimes increased worldwide by 5% per annum, in the US alone, there are now 2 million victims of violent crime every year (UNDP, 1997). The rise of crime is going parallel with the destruction of the family. Killings of minors increased in many developing countries by more than 40% in the 1990s. A third of married women in the developing countries are battered by their husbands during their lifetime. Dowry deaths in India are put at least at 5000 a year.
In the US, every year nearly 3 million children are reported to be victims of abuse and neglect. 75 million children in the developing world are working in slavery, prostitution and hazardous conditions; among these 1 million girls, mostly in Asia, are forced into prostitution each year. In the OECD countries, there are now annual 129000 reported adult rapes; the prison population has increased from 80 to 88, there are now 4.8 intentional homicides, committed by male persons per 100000 inhabitants, and 1020 annual road deaths per 100000 inhabitants.
The suicide rate is at 21 (males) and 7 (females); 34 annual divorces per 1000 couples are registered. The oligopolistic structure of late capitalism is now superseded by a kind of ‘Dreigroschenopera’ capitalism, begging the question of the very nature of capitalist elites that Schumpeter raised in the 1940s."
