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Paul Bograd
Paul Bograd is an international communications advisor specializing in political and economic communications and behavioral economics. He advises electoral campaigns in Asia, the United States, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Russia, including past Presidential campaigns in the Philippines, Russia, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and the United States. He consults corporate and newly privatized entities with political, sociological and cultural challenges and provides communication services in the areas of crisis management, privatization and hostile mergers and takeovers. Mr. Bograd attended Ohio University and served as the Associate Director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government
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Digital and analog politics; Getting it right
Paul Bograd
Let’s not get too George W. Bush about this issue. It is not a simplistic good and evil choice. It is complex and the stakes are quite high.
My colleague Mike Hamlin had a terrific filing about Twittering Regime Change; and he his right on target. He uses a number of examples that are visionary, inspired and even heroic.
Ok. Ok. Maybe not visionary, inspired and even heroic; but at least interesting for a quiet Saturday morning. Consider the example of David Cohen, a former Bush administration official in the Department of the Interior, posting a status update on Facebook Monday morning Manila time urging Twitter users to set their locations to Tehran and their time zones to GMT +3.30. The reason? “Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches,” Cohen wrote.
“The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians’ access to the Internet down. While not as dramatic or as impactful; Cohen’s act is a kind of “no risk” cyber version of Raoul Wallenberg heroically and fatally rescuing Jews from the Nazis in Hungary. And the example of 75,000 Philippine internet users signing into a “protest” site against changing the constitution is kind of a “no risk” and light-weight cyber version of the genuinely courageous and legitimate use of “people power” street protests of EDSA 1 that removed the Marcos dictatorship and cleptocracy.
I would like to build on what Mike started writing about. There is a dark side to all this. The same cyber and digital enabling of these 75,000 online petition signers also abetted the mob rule of EDSA 2 that led to the military removal of the only Philippine President elected without controversy or allegations of election fraud since the 1960’s. The same cyber and digital enabling of these 75,000 online petition signers also enabled the mob rule, military and judicial coups and economic blackmail that removed the thrice democratically elected Thaksin Shinawatra and two of his democratically elected successors.
I guess that my conclusion is that cyber and digital enabled communications presents a whole new set of paradigms and conundrums for the political mind; What Responsibilities Do the Carriers of cyber and digital enabled communications have in this? Isn’t Twitter “in effect” conspiring with the Iranian Security and Cyber police when they allow searches by location and timezone? Isn’t Google abridging my right to free speech and thought when they allow the Chinese government to censor the Google platform? If a computer manufacturer installs the “mandatory” censorship chip that a few governments are considering; is that manufacturer a human rights violator?
And what about my political and Intellectual Property rights when my name or image is used without permission in a medium (the Internet) that is largely beyond my access to legal recourse? Is someone who hacks into Google to stop its self censorship software in China an evil “cyber criminal” or are they a cyberworld freedom fighter? Isn’t the mobile phone carrier responsible for an SMS system that allows anonymous threats and enables illegal or unethical behavior? Are not Twitter and Google just as responsible as the banks that enabled the Nazis to conduct their genocide?
Obviously I may be taking this to its emotional extreme, but I don’t think so. In its own way the IT enabled politics of this century may have greater potential for evil than the firearm, truncheon, nuclear and muscle enabled “Analog” politics of the past 1,000 years. The visionary George Orwell novel 1984 described this IT or “Digitally” enabled political and sociological horror with more power and eloquence than I am capable of.
My last thought about this is to be clear. The answers to the questions I have raised are NOT to in any way abridge IT enabled politics, or impose any form of censorship or denial. The answers lie in finding the political, legal and technical will to impose on IT enabled politics the same set of protections for the individual and the same set of institutional responsibilities that that we have been trying to impose on the “Analog” politics of the past 1,000 years.
Let’s not get too George W. Bush about this issue. It is not a simplistic good and evil choice. It is complex and the stakes are quite high. IT and “Digitally” Enabled politics is not some “Nerd” powered open source exercise that can be controlled by a self selected user group. IT-enabled politics is likely to be more powerful and socially and politically definitive than the past 1,000 years of “Analog” enabled politics. And no one with a stake in the political nature of man should sit by idly and allow the implications of IT-enabled politics to unfold without their active participation in that politics.
In my opinion the developing nations of Asia with their weak and “legitimacy challenged” political institutions and the cultural avarice for the Digital have the biggest stake of all in getting the “Digitally Enabled” Politics right.
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Posted
7/2/2009 9:32:04 AM |
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About Iran
Paul Bograd
Random Observations from Manila
Well I guess in the classical sense Iran is part of Asia so I will take the political version of “literary license” and post a couple of quick thoughts about recent events there.
I won’t subject anyone to a long geo-political discourse. I am not an expert on Iran or Islamic politics so I won’t go there; but the past week presented the opportunity for a few observations:
Observation #1. There is a legitimate and moral difference between popular protest at an unfair, illegitimate and immoral election result as we have seen this past week in Iran and the self-serving, narcissistic mob rule that overturned legitimate democratic election results in Thailand and the Philippines. (I am not naïve; I don’t think that Iranian opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi is a shining beacon of enlightened leadership. However the protests in behalf of his candidacy represented the most progressive aspirations of an Iranian society that is more pluralistic, secular and global than many would suppose.)
Observation #2. President Obama’s behavior this past week may be a good case study in expending personal-popularity capital to move a policy agenda. It would have been the easy, popularity building thing to lead the public chorus of legitimate outrage at the behavior of the Theocracy in Iran. Obama would have been great at this. It could have been his Ronald Reaganesque “Tear Down This Wall” moment. He is undoubtedly the most skilled political orator of our time and no doubt he would have been up to it.
Yet he chose to hold his oratorical fire for a while. He gave up the opportunity for an easy popularity gain. He accepted the attacks and hits on his popularity and favorability ratings. And there were plenty of hits… The Wall Street Journal; The Republican Party; many in his own Democratic Party and even among his legion of “Euro-Groupies” who had greeted his election as if it would signal the end of McDonalds and Disneyland. I believe that he chose to hold his oratorical fire; take the hits and in effect expend the personal political and popularity capital that he has built up, because he was able to discipline himself to see the situation inside Iran through the eyes of the Iranian opposition.
He understood and accepted that for Iranians, the situation in Iran is not about Barrack Obama, nor is it about the United States, or France or even Israel. It is about them. It is about Iranians. It is about the emptiness of a life isolated from the knowledge, and ideas, and opportunities that the world provides. And it is about the aspirations and hopes that are provided by that same global knowledge, and those same ideas, and opportunities. Only when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the incumbent Theocracy of Iran can divert the dialogue from a dialogue about Iran and Iranians to the real or fabricated sins of Barrack Obama, or the United States, or France or Israel or even Iraq, can their offer of hatred, ignorance and Theocratic dictatorship survive.
So Barrack Obama chose not to give them the opportunity to divert the dialogue. And he may pay a short term price for doing so. However in behaving the way he has; I believe he started to expose a fundamental weakness in the Ahmadinejads and the Theocratic dictators of the world. They can only exist through lies and distortions. In the long run, Obama’s investment of political and popularity capital will be rewarded, because sooner rather then later, the lies and distortions about the rest of the world will unseat Ahmadinejad and the incumbent Theocracy; and maybe Iran and Iranians can get back in the middle of the knowledge, and ideas, and opportunities that the world provides... And Barrack Obama will get some of the credit for that day.
Observation #3. My last observation might actually be the only one of any practical value to anyone and it concerns of all things! Football. No; not American football but real football. Soccer. News reports indicated that four members of the Iranian national football team had been “retired” in retaliation for wearing green arm bands in protest of the fraudulent election. This occurred during a world cup qualifying match with South Korea in Seoul.
Now if you know international football at all, you know that Iran and Iranians are football fanatics. The success of their national team is a source of pride and accomplishment and even national honor. Even Ahmadinejad is a rabid fan. So the “political” retirement of four starting players will reverberate and communicate the cultural illegitimacy of the ruling Theocracy far into the “Silent Majority” of Iranian society who are neither dissidents nor theocratic fundamentalists.
So I have a humble suggestion to those athletes around the world who believe in the purity of athletic competition. To those who believe in the meritocracy of sport; I suggest you refuse to play against an Iranian team that is selected not on merit or skill or spirit. Refuse to play against an Iranian team that is selected based on the distortions, lies, hatred and narcissism of the Theocracy.
I think that single act will do more to expose the illegitimacy of the Iranian Theocracy than all of the politicized denunciations emanating for many of the western capitals. And the decision not to play against the Iranians should come from the players of competing national teams. Not from national governments or politicized sports associations. It will only be effective coming from the athletes themselves. Is it realistic to expect this to happen? Probably not; but worth the effort never the less.
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Posted
6/26/2009 12:45:47 PM |
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A political shot in the foot of economic development
Paul Bograd
And this time it is not the politicians' fault... Sort of
With your permission I will start off today’s missive with a couple of trite old sayings:
- “Well they took careful aim and shot themselves directly in the foot.”
- “They are trying to kill the golden goose.”
- “Politics big and small is the biggest killer of Philippine jobs.”
Well the last saying I kind of made up for this posting, but you will get the point after a while.
One of the few global economic success stories coming from the Philippines has been the remarkable growth and resilience of the BPO and Call Center industries. Jobs, salaries and investment in the sector have continued to grow even in the face of global economic crisis. Hundreds of thousands of young and older Filipinos are grabbing up better paying, stable and dignified jobs. And I am not just talking about online customer service and sales jobs. But high-skill, value-added opportunities that are giving hundreds of thousands of Filipinos valued and tangible experiences for their resume even as they go beyond the BPO sector.
I am not unmindful of the social disruption that results from the 9 pm to 6 am work shift nor do I think that the largely urbanized BPO sector is the panacea to the developing world’s socio-economic aspirations; but the BPO sector has been a significant and undeniable and prideful component of the socio-economic ambitions of the nation and more importantly of the individual.
But the more extraordinary thing about the industry has been that this is a success story that evolved as a result of the formal intervention of the political establishment. To be sure these were a minority of forward thinking and globally competent politicians and not the typical bureaucrat and elected officials, but never-the-less there is a direct link between some members of the political class and the hundreds of thousands of jobs created by this industry. (It should be noted that there will be significant electoral and political benefit to accrue to them… and that is how the successful democratic system is supposed to work!)
This is no small thing in a political environment where the statement: “I am from the Government and I Am Here to Help You” is one of the great lies of contemporary public intercourse and a cruel paradox in the democratic evolution of a nation.
It is with this background that I noticed a small news item about a very small group of former Dell Computer employees suing Dell for “wrongful” dismissal in the Philippines. The details were sketchy, but the suit is by 70 former employees (Dell at that time had some 4,000 employees at a BPO center near the Mall of Asia in Manila)
Actually, for all I know the suit could be a justified action by a genuinely aggrieved group of “victim” former employees. But I doubt it. (If my assumption is wrong, I will apologize and buy all of the complainants and their many attorneys Ice Cream at the Mall of Asia.)
So what’s the point of this observation you might ask? Well the point is that in the BPO/IT-enabled sector the “political class” went beyond their usual “self-serving” norm into an extraordinarily productive “mutual self-service” kind of relationship with the governed; A kind of “Perfect Storm” of representative democratic political economics.
The governed get jobs, and dignity and opportunity… The business elite get profits… and the political class get votes! Wow! Send this formula to the IMF!
But hold on… a new villain emerges. Alas it appears to be the governed. This tiny minority; these 70 or so have chosen to respond to their job loss not with responsibility to the common good and self-examination and self-improvement. They responded not with responsible political actions; like for instance building a genuine organized labor institution.
These otherwise ordinary and probably very decent people chose a highly politicized judicial path. They are trying to take the “politics as usual” easy way out. Taking this into the quagmire of a judicial system that has become the poison pill of decent investors both foreign and domestic. The litany of horrors is endless; from “purchased TROs” to cases languishing for 15 - 20 years. It can and will kill the job-providing part of the “Perfect Storm” of representative democratic political economics previously mentioned.
Sadly it is a story repeated time after time not only in the developing world, but across the developed economies as well.
The long-time victims are now part of the problem. And it is not their fault. It is the obvious and inevitable Pavlovian response to a flawed power elite… My Interests Are More Important Than Any One Else’s has been their modus operandi.
So in this case of the 70, they appear to have responded “in kind”. The interests of the 70 are more important than the interests of the 4,000, or even the hundreds of thousands who have benefited from the BPO industry.
I am not sure I have an answer to this but maybe the answer is just as simple as not trying to change a flawed elite by emulating them. Maybe, just maybe you can replace them by being better then them.
Maybe the answer is a form of the “Perfect Storm” of representative democratic political economics previously mentioned… The governed get jobs, and dignity and opportunity… The business elite get profits…. And the political class get votes! Find those political, business and cultural elite that openly acknowledge the flaws of the “My Interests Are More Important Than Any One Else’s” paradigm.
Reward those willing to reject this flawed paradigm and replace it with a genuine altruism; or at least a form of the productive “mutual self-service” kind of relationship with the governed. Give them votes. That is the weakness of most politicians and that is the opportunity.
Or better yet replace the old elite with a better idea…
Mutual Self Interest; The “Perfect Storm” Of Representative Democratic Political Economics:
The governed get jobs, and dignity and opportunity…
The business elite get profits…
And the political class get votes!
Wow!
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Posted
5/16/2009 12:38:35 PM |
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Twiting swine flu and Asia
Paul Bograd
I would like to suggest an alternative view of why Asia has been largely spared from the recent so-called “Pandemic” of Swine Flu.
I can sum up the reason in 4 simple words:
“Asia Don’t Twit Much”
Yes, that’s it… You heard it here first.
Consider the following:
In today’s headlines the leading news providers and international health organizations are grudgingly and with no small sense of disappointment; advising that the great “Swine Flu” pandemic of April 2009 may have been really more of “Swine Twit” than a real Pandemic.
They are all kind of looking for a face saving way out of the false panic they created.
Of course the petty bureaucrat in some of them is scrambling to be sure they can keep the hundreds of millions of dollars, euros, RMBs, Yen, Pesos etc. that they guilted legislatures and governments to give them with no bids, public hearings or transparency.
And they are trying to be sure they can get to keep their 15 minutes of fame, as so-called news programs so desperate for entertaining or shocking news has been willing to interview anyone who will wear a surgical mask while being interviewed.
And of course last but not least the “News” networks will have to find a good use for the Swine Flu …Day 14 “logotypes” and stage sets they have created in a desperate competitive grab for ratings at the expense of the fears and human flaws of their viewers… Who are by the way actually hoping (in vain) to get the “mythical and elusive” facts and news from the networks.
So what does Twitter have to do with all this and why is Asia relatively spared because it does not Twit much?
Well by many news accounts; the multinational World Health Organization, the multiple Centres for Disease control, as well as many national governmental health and first response agencies as well as millions of presumably well intentioned individuals sounded the global “Swine Flu” alert via millions of “Twitter” and “Twitter” like messages.
Now information as important, complex, nuanced and subject to exploitation and panicked response was sent to millions of unsuspecting adults and children via a medium largely designed for monosyllabic, narcissistic messaging to let your “twitter” buddies know that you forgot to wear underwear this morning or some such other entertaining “twits”.
Fortunately for Asia; Twitting has not yet taken hold to the degree of celebrity that it has in the West; so most Asians had to get their information about Swine Flu in more complete, contextual, nuanced and responsible form and mediums. (Of course that did not stop the Hong Kong Authorities from locking up several hundred healthy travellers in bizarre and panicked hotel quarantine.)
I am not for a single second denigrating the commitment and competence of the global and national health care institutions. When the real Pandemic comes…and it will; their knowledge will be our only weapon of defence. And I will save my comments on Twitter for another day.
But if we learn anything from the great “Swine Twit” of 2009, we should learn that twitting is no substitute for real knowledge and to “Twit” is not to communicate.
At the risk of over intellectualizing; we should all remember that René Descartes wrote "I Think, Therefore I Am.” I am sure he did not mean "I Twit, Therefore I Am.”
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Posted
5/4/2009 2:30:16 PM |
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Swords into plowshares….
Paul Bograd
or… err… uhm… Coffee Beans!
I just reemerged from an all-night, death defying rumble through the Central Highlands of Vietnam…Pleiku, Buon Ma Thuot, Dalat, all vicious blood letting battlefields of the 1970’s.
Now stop right there! I know that you are thinking that I am off on some Apocalypse Now induced flashback in the guise of my recent cinema inspired Asian Pundit contributions. But really, I just got back.
This time however, the risk to life was not the “Homeland Security” forces of the 1970’s North Vietnamese Army. The risk to life was from the endless stream of trucks carrying the fruits of open market commerce from the Central Highlands to the rest of the world... and vice versa.
I was on my way to speak at a conference to address the challenges of winning the global coffee wars on behalf of the people of Vietnam and Daklak province in particular. Daklak is the premier coffee producing province of Vietnam.
The Challenge is not a small one. The Vietnamese have been growing coffee for a long time now. The French colonialists needed something to have with their croissants and irresponsible colonial policies; and the climate, soil and labor economics seemed perfect. The Vietnamese adapted coffee into thickened sludge of sweetened condensed milk and sugar that requires a device that sits on top of your glass. So the domestic market was captive and Vietnam has had a pretty robust coffee industry for a long time. And since market economics are a recent addition to Vietnam, the Vietnamese didn’t plow under the coffee crop at the first sign of unstable prices in the past. (Like the Philippines)
But it is in the mid 1990’s that the fun really started. Major loans from the World Bank, from the Vietnamese government (which obtained the soft money from world banking institutions) and from, guess who - the Big Four coffee processors (Nestle, Kraft, Proctor and Gamble, and Sara Lee) made it possible for thousands of poor Vietnamese to become coffee farmers. And Vietnam’s coffee output went from 90,000 tons a year to 1,000,000 tons a year in a decade. And the world coffee prices went from $2.40 per pound to around $00.40 per pound. (Actually below the cost of production for most farmers.)
So the Vietnamese trying to act responsibly have cut production in an attempt to limit supply and stabilize prices to farmers. (There is not much evidence of similar responsible actions by the coffee big corporate 4!) Of course the Vietnamese action is offset by China’s aggressive financing of massive coffee plantation in Africa and similar coffee expansion in Africa financed by multi-lateral financial institutions. ( I have no doubt that the Corporate Big 4 are encouraging this in order to maintain the supply of low priced, low grade coffee that they can synthetically flavor and turn into the “instant vanilla, hazelnut, cinnamon, low fat, frozen latte, mochchino, frappe, 3 in 1”coffees that are flooding the market.)
So the Vietnamese, being the smart people they are, figured out that they need to get out of the “no-win” competition for the lowest price coffee and figure out a way to get to “high value” coffee instead of the below production cost coffee that is flooding the world’s markets.
Hence the seminar in Daklak: it focused on higher technical quality and brand development for higher value. I was invited to talk about brand value creation.
But for me; the most interesting moment of the seminar came from one Vietnamese official, and it wasn’t really about coffee but about how different governments and civic leadership in Southeast Asia view the world.
Buon Ma Thuot, the host city for the conference is a pleasant city in the Central Highlands of Vietnam near the Cambodian border. It is famous for coffee, climate and a few other agricultural products and it is most famous as the site of the last set battle of the Vietnam War. The victory of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces at Buon Ma Thuot signaled the end of the South Vietnamese regime and the fall of the former Saigon was only days away.
With such important historic significance Buon Ma Thuot has a number of appropriate military monuments around town, including a Tank that greets people as they enter the city.
At some point in the seminar one of the civic leaders suggested that maybe we should replace the gun barrel of the tank with a coffee bean, as a symbol of change. He very eloquently talked about it being time put the past away and think of our economic future. (It is more then 30 years ago that the battle of Buon Ma Thuot took place.)
What struck me most about this is what Vietnam’s Southeast Asian neighbors should learn from this. Vietnam, a society that has a genuine history of extraordinary military triumph against overwhelming odds is moving away from militaristic views of problems solving. While across the region, nations whose military history is less than stellar move more and more toward militaristic solutions. (These “armchair” soldier nations know to whom I refer.)
It is an important point, I think, in the political evolution of Southeast Asia. The Vietnamese may indeed have found a “better cup of coffee” in more ways than one.
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Posted
7/24/2007 2:12:12 PM |
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INDEPENDENCE DAY the Movie and Zero Sum Games
Paul Bograd
Maybe somebody has to lose?
Well I counted it up yesterday. I’ve been gone from AsianPundit.com for 6 months. No excuses; just caught up in other work, a bit of geo-political alienation I suppose and no small measure of laziness.
I am not sure how to jump back into AsianPundit, after being away for so long.
Back in my pre-married days I had the same dilemma with girls I had dated, then never called again and then called again after 6 months. You never really know what to say, but you just jump back in the water. So as Jack Nicholson say’s in The Shining… "He’s Back!"
INDEPENDENCE DAY the Movie
Since I am a chronic early riser I try to catch up on old movies during the coveted 6:00 - 8:00 am time slot. This morning’s feature was Independence Day, the 1996 Sci-Fi tale of mankind’s triumph over interstellar aliens intent on destroying and invading the earth. The Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum feature film is a terrific compilation of clichés and predictable perfect endings with paternal redemption, romantic fulfillment and Arabs and Israelis (among other blood enemies) joining forces to kick some alien ass. Don’t get me wrong; I really liked the movie. After all, “Art” is intended to represent the illusion of all the perfection, clarity and absoluteness of resolution that real life rarely is. I guess that is why the George W. Bushs of the world are such extraordinary artists… well maybe Bullsh*t artists, but artists none the less.
So what does this have to do with Zero Sum Games; you may be asking yourself.
Well Independence Day ends pretty predictably:
- The drunken, embarrassment of a father played by Randy Quaid is redeemed in the eyes of his children when he completes a Kamikaze like bombing of an alien spacecraft.
- The nerdy, environmentalist, intellectual is redeemed in the eyes of his macho-seeking ex-wife and the militaristic American President when he goes off on a combat mission, nukes the aliens and comes back smoking victory cigars.
- Arab and Israeli air force pilots forget a couple of thousand years of irreconcilable hatred and join forces to attack the ugly aliens… and they are really ugly.
- All mankind, including African tribes armed with spears come together in triumph over the pan ultimate and absolute evil alien attackers.
- And last but not least, the key to the triumph is a “productive computer virus”. (FYI, I am opposed to capital punishment for anyone; but for those who create computer viruses, I will make an exception.)
Still wondering what this has to do with Zero Sum Games?
As my morning coffee dwindled down it occurred to me that in order for any good to happen someone had to lose out. If someone wins it is always at the expense of the loser. I mean for mankind to win; the aliens had to die. For the drunken father to be redeemed his children had to lose him. It took an alien invasion and the destruction of the earth for Arab and Israeli pilots to be allies. And the intellectual had to turn to physical violence to be redeemed by political society and get his ex-wife back. Even the Will Smith character had to jettison his professional ambitions in order to pursue his true love in the arms of a beautiful, single parent, exotic dancer.
So as my morning wore on and I returned to my professional life thinking about politics, elections, trade and commerce I found one of my fundamental beliefs had been broken with a certain degree of finality.
For a long time I believed that in economics, politics, trade, spirituality and commerce that the concept of the Zero Sum Game was avoidable.
While I have been harboring some questions for the past few years, I still held to the core belief that:
- Pathological poverty could be overcome without confiscating the wealth of others.
- Quality health care for the many did not come at the expense of freedom of healthcare choice for the individual.
- Global trade did not come at the expense of national well being.
- Spiritual and religious co-existence did not come at the expense of religious freedoms.
- Rising tide raises all boats!
- One for all and all for one!
- Too many other political, religious and economic clichés to mention.
Or as the Elvis Costello song once put it: “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?”
You Get the Idea!
But even in the fictional perfection that is art, we exist in a Zero Sum Game.
This simplistic, jingoistic, Sci-Fi film, Independence Day; with its absolutist message of good over evil, romantic love conquers all, and world saving computer viruses, cannot escape that someone wins and someone loses. There is not a win-win situation.
So maybe we need to revisit the current globally dominant perceptions of economics, politics, spirituality, trade and commerce. Maybe we should consider that they are actually Zero Sum Games?
- Maybe reducing pathological poverty does require confiscatory policies toward the top seven percent of global wealth.
- Maybe developing less developed economies does come at the expense of the developed economies and not simply as small by-products of increased wealth to the top. Maybe it doesn’t trickle down!
- Maybe we cannot tolerate so-called religious freedoms if they come at the involuntary cost of freedom of expression, basic human dignities and quality of life of the non-believers.
- Maybe real electoral fairness and honestly counting the votes will require the dismantling of elite societal structures that randomly overturn the popular will.
- Maybe reasonable energy pricing will require the limitation of profits in the energy sector across the supply table; corporate, individual, tribal and national.
Nowhere is the fundamental debate on Zero Sum Games more important than in Asia. Global economics create greater and greater wealth gaps between the haves and have-nots; political and social strains create fundamental conflict between the self determination and individual empowerment inherent in democratic governance; and the elites’ willingness to abrogate democratic process in order to preserve the status quo. Spiritual and fundamentalist religious movements challenge the basic tenants of logic, reason and science that have historically formed stable societies.
The Zero Sum Games of Independence Day were harmless, escapist and fun cinema fiction; but just maybe we need to reconsider our perception of Zero Sum Games if we want to change real life, for real people.
So as they say… Let the games begin.
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Posted
7/11/2007 12:35:50 PM |
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