China’s Legal Software
Via Smart Mobs –
CHINA introduced measures for the first time yesterday to force all personal computer makers to install legally licensed operating system software in their products.
There goes another factor that helped provide China’s cheap labor. And add another product to the illicit economy – hardware with pirated software. Stability and profits go down with that move.
Does Nation Building Work?
A very interesting paper – Does Nation Building Work? (PDF)
…Payne defines nation building as “the use of ground troops to support a deliberative effort to create a democracy.” Using this definition, he identifies 52 instances of nation building, all by the United States or Great Britain from the period 1850 to 2000. (The list is in the extension). Of these he identifies 14 or just 27 percent where the treatment could be considered a success, success defined as maintaining some semblance of democracy after ground troops were withdrawn.
Barnett and Enterra will consider this as descriptive of their target market potential, but Dr. Frankenstein intended his creature to be beautiful as well.
Click below to see the list – Continue Reading →
Housing Bubble Update
Michael Shedlock – Basing the model of the housing bubble off of Japan’s Michael plots the US on the graph –
Fed & Market State
NYT – The President and Chief Economist of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas stumble across the fact we are increasingly transitioning into a market state when it…
…set out to document the connection between globalization and public policy. We found that the more globalized nations tend to pursue policies that achieve faster economic growth, lower inflation, higher incomes and greater economic freedom. The least globalized countries are prone to policies that interfere with markets and lead to stagnation, inflation and diminished competitiveness.
And they also manage to touch on the lack of rule set shifts – which is the crux of the problem –
We found that more globalized counties do no better in limiting the size of government, which we consider vital to economic prosperity. They are worse than the less globalized in containing public entitlements and subsidies, which must be paid for by higher individual income taxes.
All without any hint of understanding the framework within which these developments are taking place. This inability (at the strategic level) will be a major factor in potentially collapsing this iteration of globalization.
South Korean E-Courts
(H/T Smart Mobs)
This knowledge may come in handy during a sustained pandemic.