Lawrence Summers in an Obama Administration? 

It would be an interesting sight to see Summers holding one of the most important posts in Obama's administration (Fish, The New York Times). As the chief economist at the World Bank, his internal memos were leaked to the press where he wrote: "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that." Particularly, he found Africa to be the best place to dump this toxic waste. Let me quote from Global Shadows, written by James Ferguson, a Stanford anthropologist:

On 12 December 1988, Lawrence Summers, the chief economist of

the World Bank, sent an internal memo (later leaked to the press) in

which he argued that the export of pollution and toxic waste to the Third World constituted an economically sound, “world-welfare enhancing trade” that should be actively encouraged by the World Bank. Since “the measurement of the costs of health-impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality,” “a given amount of health-impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages.” Furthermore, he suggested, carcinogens associated with, say, prostate cancer are of less concern in countries where people are not likely to live long enough to develop such diseases. In economic terms, he suggested, “the under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted.”

I would be curious to know if Summers changes his position on Africa when he serves in an administration whose head will be a guy with a name originating from Kenya.

Obama and Clinton are Technical Artifacts

Of course, I am not suggesting that Barack and Hillary are not persons. But I gave money to the Obama campaign not because he is a nice human being (how would I know if his heart is better than Hillary’s). I gave money to the campaign because I think it has succeeded in producing a better artifact, a more reliable, or some would even claim, revolutionary product; it looks like a better investment for our future. It’s a superior campaign for that reason alone, instilling in us a belief that what the product claims to do is what it will actually do. I am sold on the integrity of claims and performance. iObama is more believable that ClintonSoft.

One may have nostalgia for the days when persons were actually persons (though, I don’t think it ever was completely the case). Surprising as it may seem, the idea that Obama and Clinton may be technical artifacts is rooted in sociological research that I conducted in India’s call centers. During my research I discovered that in order to serve the American customer, Indian agents were trained in a new accent that neutralized regional influences on their English. They were given new aliases – Tim, John, Tina, and were given education in American geography and national characteristics. Their identity shift required them to rub out marks of primary socialization, knowledge of their culture, and styles of speech. But isn't all our identity part of the system? Do I matter more than my FICO score, which decides my fate in so many ways?

Does it really matter whether Obama and Clinton are also persons, a fact that's besides the point? We should keep to their images and profiles, and see which one looks and feels more reliable. The only difference between politics and a shopping mall is that the product cannot be just cool and sexy for it to make a difference in our lives; a political product should also be realible and durable; if behind its claims lie contradictions and fine print, why bother buying it. For example, ClintonSoft was originally a pro-peace product but then, to fulfill the needs of the entire market, it also claimed to be pro-war at the same time. Only BushXxon was allowed to claim that the war was actually peace without damaging the integrity of its claims. And McCaine-rox is just pure ludicrous in its combination of lobbyists and ethics.

I’m not sure if I have been able to convince you about the soundness of the artifact approach but you must agree that performing a heart surgery on iObama and ClintonSoft will only yield a bunch of wires and microprocessors with copyright and patent protection. How useful will that be?

Spending is Saving

By A. Aneesh

Recently I have been receiving messages from corporate America. In the morning today, Blockbuster sent me a card with some advice: “The more you rent, the more you’ll save.” Baffled, I scratched my head to understand how I can save by spending. The key is to understand their interest as my interest. The message further stressed in bold: “Your business means a lot to us. So grab your MORE Card and go enjoy some great movies and big savings on us.” The MORE Card offers: 1) No Late Fee; 2) More Copies Guaranteed; 3) Unlimited Savings through a rental discount for a month. Maybe I’m an idiot. Because I am still trying to calculate how I can save more by spending more. My fellow Americans, on the other hand, are not so literal. They get the nuance and surplus meanings of ordinary language. They have already understood these messages in their characteristic positive spirit: by disregarding the negative news of mountainous personal debt. Perhaps Blockbuster is asking me to save on that nasty rental spending spree that is always lurking in the back of my head. This does restore my mind's calm against the possible loss of mind.

Evidently, Blockbuster is not the only one with the message that spending is indeed a form of saving. A week ago my oldest credit card after several incarnations – from First USA, Bank One to now Chase – also announced in a personal message to me: “Relax, Write a Check and Start Saving.” It read: “Dear Aneesh, Simply by writing a few checks you can get more breathing room in your budget and see real savings in your monthly payments…You can write these checks for any purpose you choose – so it’s like writing yourself a loan with no application to fill out. They come with the same annual percentage rate (APR) you already enjoy with your card.” Again, the message is clear: our interest is your interest. By writing a check your monthly payments will surely increase (unless you're transfering a higher-interest balance; but that story needs another blog) but those payments must be understood as earnings. To put it another way: when you pay us, you are paying yourself. Lending and borrowing are one and the same. This is obviously a new form of logic that was still not developed at the time I took a course in philosophical logic in college.

Let me assure you I do understand euphemisms and newspeak. I know how “firing the workers” becomes “downsizing” or “right-sizing;” “torture” is mentioned as “physical persuasion;” and “imprisonment without due process” is called “protective custody.” But I am talking about an entirely new development in logic. It’s not just about giving a more pleasant linguistic twist to a disconcerting practice. It’s about shattering the very basis of binary opposites by incorporating in a term its exact opposite: like “day is night” or “hot is cold” or "War is actually peace," as President Bush once announced. We can already see applications of this form of logic in the political sphere where “occupation” is understood in terms of its exact opposite: “liberation.” Iraq is at once occupied and liberated. Because our interest is their interest. And the amazing thing is everyone understands the meaning without taking a college course in logic.

I am going to pay Blockbuster with a Chase check, and save twice in a single transaction.

A. Aneesh is the author of Virtual Migration: the Programming of Globalization (Duke 2006).

"Useless" Social Sciences

By A. Aneesh (author of Virtual Migration)

The question has surfaced again. It’s always a hard one for the social scientist to answer: what do they really produce? No product emerges out of this kind of research: no plasma TV, no new wireless phone, not even a new video game. No wonder Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), chair of a panel that oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF), sought to amend the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2006 to significantly reduce or eliminate funding for the social sciences. As Science reported, “Hutchison signaled that she will be taking a hard look at NSF's $200-million-a-year social and behavioral sciences portfolio, which funds some 52% of all social science research done by U.S. academics and some 90% of the work by political scientists.”

Her main concern is also a popular one: NSF should direct its resources primarily to the physical sciences, which also help us solve social and political problems of the global age. If immigration becomes a problem, we can build a high-tech virtual fence to militarize the border with Mexico, as President Bush proposed recently. Let’s spend $2 billion of tax payer’s money over the next few years to find a technical solution to the social menace of labor migration. If crime is an issue, let’s install high-tech cameras to police social inequality. Political solutions to global conflicts should indeed be technological. True, the cost of Iraq War is set to reach $315 billion September 30, 2006, the end of fiscal year 2006. But we should not divert even a fraction of that hard-earned money to soft, cheap, and useless social sciences that tend to recommend more funding for peace than for war. Even if technological solutions fail to solve these problems, they always end up helping the economy. If Lockheed Martin, Raytheon or Northrop Grumman wins the government contract for high-tech solutions to the border problem, it will also fuel economic growth at home.

I don’t think I’m being completely facetious here. Who doesn’t want economic growth? Economic productivity depends – primarily if not completely – on the hard sciences. Isn’t economic development the dominant social objective of governments, corporations, and even individuals? But let’s pause, and think about the danger of conflating the economic and the social. What is economically good may not always be socially good. If the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grows, for instance, because of the excessive construction of prisons, growth in gun sales, or the sale of antidepressants and other medications, it is hard to say that such developments are necessarily wonderful in social terms. If two-fifths of all employed Americans work mostly at odd hours—in the evening, at night, on a rotating shift, or during the weekend, that does keep a fast-paced and seamlessly integrated 24/7 economy humming, yet it also indicates a simultaneous surrender of the social to the economic. Recently, social research on pervasive nonstandard work schedules has uncovered a silent, swift, and invisible social fragmentation that haunts America. As the economy colonizes the family and social lives of all involved, spouses are not together at home in the evening or at night, and parents are often not home with their children. People’s integration into the twenty-four-hour economic system is also a temporal unhinging of family life. While the rhetoric of a 24/7 economy conjures up images of a fast-paced, seamlessly integrated engine that serves its consumers around the clock, the social cost of economic growth does not enter into the discussion. As industrial struggles for an eight-hour workday fade from social horizons, night work – and associated wok-time inequality – descends on America. But there is a technological solution to this problem as well: research on new drugs to combat sleep disorders. In fact, they are developing a drug for soldiers to reduce the hours spent on this unproductive habit called sleep. I’m just waiting for the drug to arrive in my neighborhood pharmacy.