Monday, December 13, 2004

The Terminal. In 1938, The Terminal would have ended with the stewardess marrying Viktor Navorski who would become an American citizen and be welcomed to the free world. In 1962, The Terminal would have ended with all the airport workers conspiring against management to escort Victor Navorsky to the nightclub of his father's dreams. Or maybe they'd have moved the nightclub into Idlewild. In 2005, there would be no movie; Victor Navorsky would have been thrown in a Federal Prison for a few years and then sent home to Krakozia, where he'd become a leader in anti-American politics. But, for the present, it's charming. [Mark Bernstein] The "2005" comment is rather odd, since a major point of the movie was that the KGB supervisor kept trying to trick Navorsky into giving him an excuse to throw him in a Federal prison for a few years. 2:54:49 PM    comment () North Korea embraces capitalism by default. Writing in the Asia Times, Andrei Lankov, Australian National University, tells the remarkable story of how North Korea is making the transition from socialist-made famine in the 1990s to a de facto market economy. It began with a slight relaxation in domestic travel permits, and the propensity of officials to take a bribe. Other factors combined to set in motion the logic of markets: the move the masses of people into the cities for food, the establishment of informal businesses (run mostly by women), the rise of a merchant class, access to foreign currency, underground money lenders, and the inability of the government to fight back for lack of resources. This is a remarkable case study. As the author says: "In the Soviet Union of the late 1950s and in China of the late 1970s, Stalinism-Maoism was dismantled from above, through a chain of deliberate reforms planned and implemented by the government. In North Korea the same thing happened, but the system disintegrated from below, despite weak and ineffectual attempts to keep it intact." [Mises Economics Blog] Very interesting! 2:19:30 PM    comment () Ever wonder who has the most scary stormtroopers? 9:05:09 AM    comment ()

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