October – 2007 – Steffan Antonas

Book Review: The Elephant And The Dragon – The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us

It’s almost daily now that I hear some reference, whether from the Western Media or otherwise, to China or India. If you’re currently on a modest diet of TV and Web news, you are well aware that jobs in the U.S. are threatened by off-shoring, that China is rapidly becoming the world’s factory, and that India is becoming the world’s back office. You probably also know that, because of rapid advances in Internet and other communications technologies, the world is “flattening.” I’ve you’ve been AWAKE at all this year, you know that pollution is going to be a global fight for the next 50-100 years because you’ve been exposed to the hype about global warming. What you may not know is how the heck things got to be the way they are today. This book, in combination with Friedman’s The World Is Flat, is a killer combo for anyone looking to put everything that’s going on politically and economically into sharp perspective. Read More

Things You May Not Have Known About Gandhi

For the majority of time I studied and worked as a T.A. at Georgetown in 2003-2005 I lived in Adams Morgan – about 30 minutes walk from the Georgetown Campus. Not having a car, I walked to campus most days, passing the statue of Gandhi at Embassy Row. The memories I have of seeing that statue over and over on those walks are as vivid as any I have from that period in my life. The brass statue stands as a strong reminder of the legendary humanitarian.

The intended effects of the deliberate display of symbolic artifacts like this statue in public areas is undoubtedly to send a very clear message to the public – that certain ethical and moral values, for instance, are good for society. And why not remind the public of the virtues of non-violence, helping the poor and selflessness?? By any of these measures, Gandhi is a legend – which is why it makes perfect sense that this particular statue was chosen to stand amid a cluster of over 50 international embassies in D.C. – it’s the perfect political marketing message for international cooperation and peace.

That said, here are some interesting questions for those of you reading this. What if you learned something about Gandhi today that you found shocking and offensive? Would it change the value of the statue’s symbolism for you? After all, what the statue means to you (or any of us) is directly related to what you know of Gandhi (and, most importantly, how you feel about what you know). You have a relationship, so to speak, with the object based on your knowledge of it.

I, like most I’m sure, associated this statue with all of the positive P.R. Ganhdi gets. In fact, in Western pop culture it’s rare that you would hear Gandhi’s name associated with anything but praise, so our collective opinion as a society is (naturally) overwhelmingly positive. But the reality is, on an individual level, all I really know of Gandhi is what I’ve been exposed to in popular media and from books and TV. And to be honest, those opinions, until recently, have been unanimously positive. Read More

It’s All About Healthy Incentives

A common phrase I’ve heard associated with Tyler Cowen’s new book Discover Your Inner Economist is Mind Grenade, and less than 50 pages in, it becomes clear why. Although I have yet to come across an explicit and concise definition of Mind Grenade, this phrase has undoubtedly been used heavily when talking about this book because of Cowen’s uncanny ability to create “aha! moments” through expert story-telling using extremely well-considered, simple language.

Here’s Cowen on The Virtues Of Capitalsm and Why Fostering a Sense of Control Should be An Inherent Element in Any Economy:

One of the least-heralded virtues of capitalism is how it blends and melds different kinds and mixes of rewards and penalties. Capitalism is not just dollars, dollars, and more dollars. It is also the best system for mobilizing intrinsic motivations toward the greater good of mankind. And that includes allowing people a sense of control.

Capitalism is about knowing when to change incentives and about knowing when to stop thinking about money. The problem with Soviet communism was not just that healthy incentives were too weak, but also that bad incentives were too strong. For most people in the Soviet Union, the only way to have a decent life was to court the Communist Party. This pressure was always present and always overbearing. The choice was to be a total rebel — which usually led to a very bad end — or to court or at least tolerate power. Virtually every social and economic decision was influenced by this calculus.

Of course, this was an unhealthy incentive, but that was not the only problem. It is less commonly understood that the Soviet Union offered less scope for incentive-free behavior than does capitalism. A state-controlled economy led to less pay, most of all in the realm of creating and implementing new business ideas. Play was pretty much restricted to close friendships and family relations. The result was less creativity and less personal human investment in making our world a better place.

And that is a big reason why communism failed.

– Tyler Cowen

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Month October 2007

Book Review: The Elephant And The Dragon – The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us

Things You May Not Have Known About Gandhi

It’s All About Healthy Incentives