McKenzie Wark on 5 Dec 2000 05:09:45 -0000 |
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[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Fw: Enemies of the Future |
Felix is quite right, the bubble is not the main thing. But it is not entirely irrelevant either. The 'irrational exuberance' of investors plowed a lot of money into dotcoms that, in hindsight, could have been better invested elswhere. Its the price you pay, in a market economy for getting resources allocated more or less right most of the time -- those times when investment just goes up in smoke. Perhaps there will be a hard swing the other way -- investors avoiding what may be pretty good bets and under investing in internet opportunites. What may matter more in the long run is whether there really was an underlying improvement in productivity in the economy as a whole. There are arguments for it, but where's the evidence? Has the long boom in the US been driven by anything other than sucking in money from retail investors at home and institutional investors abroad that might otherwise have gone elsewhere? I can't help wondering about the role of the US based business media in selling the idea of the US as a place to invest. All that relentless stock boosting hype. For a short while those prophesies can be perfectly self fulfilling. k ______________________________________ McKenzie Wark http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark Guest Scholar, American Studies, New York University "We no longer have origins we have terminals" _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold