McKenzie Wark on Wed, 30 Jul 1997 01:19:00 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> Soros as media virus |
Whatever else he may be, it seems clear to me that Soros is a media virus. His name just pops up anywhere in connection with anything now. For example: its quite plausible that his company trades in SE Asian currencies, but i hardly think he's a major influence in the region. That his name is a convenient scapegoat for Dr Mahatir indicates to me that the extent of Soros the media virus is now amazingly global. Dr Mahatir's comments seem to me remarkably like blaming your country's economic problems on "Jewish bankers". His remarks have been received with the contempt they deserve, at least on this list. Pointing out what might be going on in SE Asia is not the same thing as "defending Soros". I think the point is rather that on this side of the world there are far more interesting things to talk about that Soros -- be that Soros the man, the banker, the philanthropist, -- or the media virus. As Steve pointed out, Malaysia has an ambitious program of public investment in getting an information industry going. The Malaysians realise that the remarkable rates of economic growth they've experienced can't be sustained unless they get into the most rapidly growing industries. Its clear now that there's a problem with manufacturing-based growth strategies. People in Europe and America have watched their industrial jobs disappear over the last few decades. Far from heralding the beginnings of an "information society", what was really happening was a global redistribution of parts of the value-added cycle. Those industrial processes were the basis of economic growth, first in Japan, then Taiwan and Korea, then Malaysia and Thailand. Part of ASEAN's strategy, it seems to me, is to create a regional political and trade environment in which businesses based in the more affluent ASEAN countries can exploit the cheaper labour and market growth in the poorer ASEAN countries, which now includes Vietnam and is envisoned as including Burma, Laos and Cambodia. Or at least that was the plan until Cambodia came unstuck again. But for the middle rank developing countries like Malaysia and Thailand, there's limits to how much gorwth can be based on manufacturing. Its been a brief and small window of opportunity for them. Capital moves much more quickly than it did 20 years ago. So the Malaysian strategy is to follow the lead of Singapore, per capita the richest of the ASEAN countries, and develop industries in the information industry. The advantages Singapore has are that English is widely spoken, the communications infrastructure is good, and the level of education is approaching 1st world standards. Malaysia doesn't really have any of those advantages, but they're going to move aggressively towards information industries anyway. After all, neither Japan nor Korea had any "comparative advantage" in heavy manufacturing in the 50s and 60s, and yet state driven industry policies worked very well there in those sectors. The reason i think all of this is of more than regional interest is that its the growth in the Pacific rim economy that's driving economic growth worldwide to some extent. Malaysia is only a small part of that picture, but its a picture made up of small parts -- its not like America or the EC where there's a high level of political integration. __________________________________________ "We no longer have roots, we have aerials." http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark -- McKenzie Wark --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de