Monday, September 27, 2004
Manmohan Singh and Edward Said
Manmohan Singh was on Charlie Rose, and Amardeep Singh has a summary of his interview. It is interesting that Manmohan Singh talks about comparative advantage as opposed to absolute advantage in the context of outsourcing. One should perhaps look at the opportunity cost of producing those goods in America whose production ends up being outsourced. Americans are probably better employed at innovation and developing new technologies, things that they are best at.
On Outsourcing, the PM claimed that it's a predictable phase in the globalization of goods and services, provable by Ricardo's "Comparative advantage Theory." [That's correct – after 150 years, Ricardo is now a household name]
Charlie Rose outdid him a bit here, suggesting that in fact outsourcing a net-job gainer for the U.S., since the disposable income it produces in the Indian middle-class is spent on consumer goods either produced in the U.S., or that have U.S. Brand names."
Also on his blog, Amardeep Singh has a nice introduction to Edward Said, Orientalism, and postcolonial literary studies.
The oriental is a myth or a stereotype, but Said shows that the myth had, over the course of two centuries of European thought, come to be thought of as a kind of systematic knowledge about the East. Because the myth masqueraded as fact, the results of studies into eastern cultures and literature were often self-fulfilling. It was accepted as a common fact that Asians, Arabs, and Indians were mystical religious devotees incapable of rigorous rationality. It is unsurprising, therefore that so many early European studies into, for instance, Persian poetry, discovered nothing more or less than the terms of their inquiry were able to allow: mystical religious devotion and an absence of rationality.
On Outsourcing, the PM claimed that it's a predictable phase in the globalization of goods and services, provable by Ricardo's "Comparative advantage Theory." [That's correct – after 150 years, Ricardo is now a household name]
Charlie Rose outdid him a bit here, suggesting that in fact outsourcing a net-job gainer for the U.S., since the disposable income it produces in the Indian middle-class is spent on consumer goods either produced in the U.S., or that have U.S. Brand names."
Also on his blog, Amardeep Singh has a nice introduction to Edward Said, Orientalism, and postcolonial literary studies.
The oriental is a myth or a stereotype, but Said shows that the myth had, over the course of two centuries of European thought, come to be thought of as a kind of systematic knowledge about the East. Because the myth masqueraded as fact, the results of studies into eastern cultures and literature were often self-fulfilling. It was accepted as a common fact that Asians, Arabs, and Indians were mystical religious devotees incapable of rigorous rationality. It is unsurprising, therefore that so many early European studies into, for instance, Persian poetry, discovered nothing more or less than the terms of their inquiry were able to allow: mystical religious devotion and an absence of rationality.
